Found in a Bottle

MY NAME IS BILL
Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
By Susan Cheever.
Illustrated. 306 pp. New York:
Simon & Schuster. $24.

TALES that testify can be intriguing as well as instructive. In her previous nonfiction, Susan Cheever has candidly written about what it means to be the child of an alcoholic (''Home Before Dark''), what multigenerational myths conceal as well as reveal (''Treetops: A Family Memoir'') and her own dependency on booze (''Note Found in a Bottle''). She has recounted the heights of success (mostly others'), recanted the depths of despair (her own and her ex-husband's) and now decants the ups and downs of a remarkable man who recovered from 15 years of addiction to be a founder+of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935 and then to travel tirelessly to sustain its growth. Cheever does so in her distinctive style: succinct chapters, pithy profiles and telling detail.