Dr Bob's talks are filled with the wisdom that kept Bill W on track during the often erratic pioneering era. Both the 1948 Detroit radio broadcast and the 1950 convention talk are included. Dr Bob tells how the day he first met Bill W.

"Well, I don't ever remember feeling much worse. But being very fond of Henry and having said we'd go over, we... started over and I extracted the solemn promise from Anne on the way over that 15 minutes of this stuff was tops. That I didn't want to talk to this mug or anybody else and we'd really make it snappy. Now these are actual facts that we got there at five o'clock and it was 11:15 when we left."

After telling how He and Bill W helped AA Number 3 Bill Dotson get sober, he tells a few hospital stories including Sister Ignatia. He explains how he equates unstable thinking with becoming selfish, in his words.

"And I almost invariably, I find that I haven't been paying quite so much attention to the boys in the ward as I should."

"Just as sure as that idea that I could probably, probably polish off a couple enters my mind, I think, what about the boys in the ward."

"You've been giving them the semi-brush off here for a few days."

"You better get back on the job, big boy, before you get into trouble."

"And I saunter right back and I'm much more attentive than I had been in the days preceding the time that I got this funny idea."

The final chapter is the brief talk at Cleveland 1950:

"Our 12 Steps when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into the words love and service."

"We understand what love is, and we understand what service is."

"So, let's bear those two things in mind."

Sister Ignatia tells her story and talks about her work with hospitalized alcoholics in the earliest days of AA. She tells how Dr Bob first asked her admit an alcoholic into the hospital for treatment of alcoholism. It was Dr Bob's straightforward honesty that convinced her it would be alright, so long as the man was under his care.