Get Free Shipping on orders over $49
The Small Book : On Addiction, Shame, Grief, Sex, Love, and the Strange Art of Living With Yourself - A.J. Daulerio

The Small Book

On Addiction, Shame, Grief, Sex, Love, and the Strange Art of Living With Yourself

By: A.J. Daulerio, The Small Bow Family Orchestra

Hardcover | 29 December 2026

At a Glance

Hardcover


$49.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $12.44 with

 or 

Available: 29th December 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

What does recovery even mean?

The Small Book gathers stories from the margins of darkness: mental illness, love, sex, debt, sobriety, inadequacy, loneliness, grief, and the long shadows that follow us forever — long enough to become our closest companions.

What happens in the coldest, darkest-bird hours after you relapse and abandon your family in favor of a bar and your mistress? When do you stop being terrorized by your newfound clarity after your wife disintegrates from a rare form of cancer in your arms? When can you stop being angry at your brother for overdosing and dying alone on his filthy couch in front of his cats?

These are not clean stories of redemption or instructions for becoming better. They are funny, brutal, intimate accounts of what happens when the ways we numb ourselves stop working, and when the secrets we keep begin to cost more than we can bear.

Brought to you by The Small Bow, the community A.J. Daulerio founded to collect and share the type of recovery writing he wanted to read, The Small Book gathers 30 essays and interviews from Clancy Martin, Cord Jefferson, Rax King, Mary H.K. Choi, Emily Gould, J Wortham, and others. Woven throughout are 50 anonymous reader Check-Ins: short, cinematic, sometimes gleefully depraved dispatches from the trenches of recovery.

Whatever brought you here, we're glad you came.

More in Social Aspects of Illness & Addictions

All the Way to the River : My Story of Love, Loss and Liberation - Elizabeth Gilbert
Blitzed : Drugs in Nazi Germany - Norman Ohler

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Nova Scotia House : A Novel - Charlie Porter

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Digital Minimalism : Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World - Cal Newport
The End of Loneliness - Benedict Wells

RRP $23.99

$20.99

13%
OFF
All the Way to the River : My Story of Love, Loss and Liberation - Elizabeth Gilbert
Addiction by Design : Machine Gambling in Las Vegas - Natasha Dow Schüll
The Age Code : The New Science of Food and How It Can Save Us - David Cox
Dreamseller : An Addiction Memoir - Bam Magera

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
Anna's Story - Bronwyn Donaghy

Paperback

RRP $27.99

$23.75

15%
OFF
Modern Nature : Journals, 1989 - 1990 - Derek Jarman

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe - Catherine Greer

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF