VIKTOR FRANKL

Many adults will remember the power of Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning when they first read it years ago. Translated from German into 27 languages, this early work of Holocaust literature sold four-million copies in English alone, a testament to the power of an inspirational tract on how one man found meaning in tragedy. That power, however, is diffused in Redsand’s debut, marred by overwritten and meandering prose. Too much is told in the introduction, so that the rest of the volume feels like reiteration. By chapter seven, the audience has been forgotten, as the work begins to sound like a textbook on psychotherapy. Readers seeking to learn about the Holocaust and understand how individuals learned to live with the memory of unspeakable horror will be better served by many of the fine personal accounts, such as Anita Lobel’s No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War (2000). (acknowledgments, source notes, bibliography, suggestions for further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)