The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey

A brief review cannot do justice to Trysh Travis's analytically muscular, well-researched history of the recovery movement. . . . This gracefully written book should be essential reading for historians seeking to understand the cultural and institutional mechanisms informing the triumph of the therapeutic in twentieth-century America.--Journal of American History



[The Language of the Heart] is the rare book that more than lives up to its promises. . . . Travis's examination is the best introductory survey published to date.--Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality



Historicizes and explicates the paradigm and movement of recovery and examines its connections to broader historical and cultural currents in the US. . . . Recommended.--Choice

A compelling and fascinating journey into the American soul as seen through Alcoholics Anonymous and the self-help movement."
--David A. Kessler, author of The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite



Travis's understanding of the recovery movement has profound implications for several established academic disciplines as well as for the incipient cross-disciplinary field of alcohol and addiction studies.--John W. Crowley, University of Alabama



Tracing the rise and diffusion of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program from subculture to pop culture, Travis provides an excellent history of the recovery movement. Destined to be a landmark in the field.--Joan D. Hedrick, Trinity College



A major reconsideration of one of modern America's most popular cultural traditions, written with intelligence and verve. Much scholarship on recovery culture derides it as apolitical self-absorption; Travis, skeptical of such polemics, discovers a dynamic and contested history of ordinary women and men navigating the complex gender and race politics of the postwar era.--David Herzberg, author of Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac



With verve and nuance, Travis offers fresh insight into the gendered subtext of recovery, one of the most broadly successful social movements of the twentieth century.--Nancy Campbell, author of Using Women: Gender, Drug Policy, and Social Justice

In The Language of the Heart, Trysh Travis explores the rich cultural history of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its offshoots and the larger "recovery movement" that has grown out of them. Moving from AA's beginnings in the mid-1930s as a men's fellowship that met in church basements to the thoroughly commercialized addiction treatment centers of today, Travis chronicles the development of recovery and examines its relationship to the broad American tradition of self-help, highlighting the roles that gender, mysticism, and bibliotherapy have played in that development.

Trysh Travis is associate professor of women's studies at the University of Florida. She helped to found and now edits Points: the Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society.