Customer Reviews

Viktor Frankl: A Life Worth Living

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Clarion Books is a children's book publisher so rarely do their titles ever appear in our adult issues - but Viktor Frankl: A Life Worth Living is a young adult read too important to be limited to the children's section alone, and many an adult will appreciate this survey of his achievement. A prison in the Nazi camps during the war, Frankl's development of logotherapy - a form of psychotherapy encouraging patients to look to the future rather than reliving traumas of the past - was to serve as a key to recovery and finding meaning in lives destroyed during the war. His biography is a powerful blend of Holocaust images, history, and facts, and makes for an outstanding coverage not to be missed by any age.

For those curious about the man behind the famous book Man's Search for Meaning, this solid, serious biography chronicles an inspiring life. Austrian Jew, Viktor Frankl, was a practicing psychiatrist and creator of logotherapy. His new treatment differed from Sigmund Freud's and Alfred Adler's, giants who began as his mentors and ended as his angry competitors. Frankl spent two and a half years in four concentration camps during the Holocaust. He believed people could exist on their inner strength. Using his previous experience doctoring suicide patients, he helped many fellow inmates survive. Upon liberation, he wrote one of the first camp exposés, Man's Search for Meaning, one of the ten most influential books in America, according to the Library of Congress. More than a personal story, Frankl analyzed the situation as a psychiatrist connecting it to his logotherapy, which finds meaning in action, creation, and suffering. Frankl, a prankster as a child, grew into a man with a flair for risk; his favorite activities included brain surgery, mountain climbing and casino gambling. The volume chronologically unfolds his life, often making parallels with Adolf Hitler who once lived near the Frankl home in Vienna. Marvelous family portraits and wonderful old postcards of Vienna set the scene and recapture the era. Warm moments discuss Frankl's family life, his two marriages and one daughter. If only title and chapter fonts had followed suit; they are frenetic, slanted and tacky. These are small quibbles in a well written book that, though text bookish, overflows with clearly explained information about heavy topics: competing psychiatric theories, discipline of logotherapy, Nazi rise to power and targeted destruction of Jews. For ages 12 and up.

What genius to make the Victor Frankl story accessible to young adults! On the verge of flying solo in a world that can be cruel, teens need a story of hope from someone who survived one of the cruelest periods in history. This book brings to light some overlooked facts about the second world war, particularly Hitler's rise to power. Frankl's discovery of how life's meaning gives a person the power to survive, however, is a staff that will guide many young adults throughout their lives.

If someone ask me, what is the meaning of life? This book would be my answer.

Gallup Independent newspaper, Albuquerque Judasim Examiner review: While Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is being observed in the U.S., an author who survived the Holocaust and whose famous book about it has been published in 24 countries and sold 22 million copies, Viktor Frankl, is better known today outside the Jewish community than within it and his book is not easily found at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Still, it remains surprising that an outstanding new biography, Viktor Frankl: A Life Worth Living that has been receiving national book awards and that brings his work to a whole new generation of young people, was written by a seemingly unlikely author: a non-Jewish Albuquerque high school teacher:

Many school teachers dream of having a book published by a top publisher. Anna Redsand, raised by Christian Reformed missionary parents on the Navajo Reservation, has worked 37 years as an educator and counselor throughout New Mexico and is now Curriculum Director at Cesar Chavez Community School in Albuquerque. She is the author of "Viktor Frankl: A Life Worth Living," a nationally award-winning biography of the world-famous Jewish psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.

Redsand attended schools at Teec Nos Pos and Shiprock and was also home-schooled, and at age nine began attending Rehoboth Mission School in Gallup. There her scholastic abilities stood out but this also made her a target. Not fitting in was a challenge to overcome that steered her towards a career in counseling and gave her empathy in helping students who she says are traumatized daily by societal conditions in New Mexico. Along the way she found that logotherapy, the approach developed by Frankl, was profoundly hopeful and useful, and began to apply it in her work. When she had to send one of her students to the hospital before he almost died from a drug overdose, she vowed to write a biography for young people so they would have direct access to Frankl's teachings.

"The story of Viktor Frankl is so powerfully hopeful that it can inspire you to find meaning in your own life despite tragedy," Redsand explained in an interview at her Albuquerque home. "It's also a lot about resilience."

read complete review, see photos of Author Anna Redsand at: The Albuquerque Judaism Examiner [...]

This biography was riveting, insightful, humorous, and enticing. I have just recently started studying about the Holocaust. I really enjoyed this book and will continue my study by reading some of the books/films referenced throughout the book. The content was very informative and comprehensive. The pictures were as important as the words. I eagerly read page after page. A special "thank you" to Anna Redsand for writing such a powerful book!

I have read everything Frankl has ever written and was looking forward to reading this biography. I was really hoping that I would learn something new about the man, but I didn't. This is a beautiful book and I think it would be a wonderful resource for adolescents, ages 12 to 18. It is not, however, a book I would recommend for a serious student of Frankl's.

Remarkably cogent and clear history of Frankl and his times and life and career. Beautifully researched and copiouslly illustrated with photographs from his Vienna and other sites from his life. I was gifted this book by a friend and am most grateful to him.

This is an important book for Junior High and High School age students. It gives a clear history of the events of Hitlers rise to power, while offering an example of "the will to live" through adversity and triumph.

My daughter had to read a book about a person who experienced the Holocaust and I suggested Viktor Frankl. Books was not too daunting and she was able to get through it rather quickly and got a lot of good information from it. She actually passed it on to a friend to read so the friend could find some encouragement in Frankl's attitude about life.