Reviews (18)

Moving Book
When looking at the book you get captured by many of the photos that were left in the secret annex. The book takes you away from the real world for awhile and brings you into the world of Anne Frank and the way she had to live had to for two years. The pitchers make you cry and you thank God that you were not alive during the Holocaust. The book really makes you think and makes your heart go out to Anne Frank and all the other innocent victims off the Holocaust. The book is good for teenagers to read and learn about and they can relate to Anne Frank and the teenage problems that she went through. It is impossible to relate with what kind of suffering she went through because of her religion. The book is truly phenomenal and will take your breath away. I give the book five stars. Everyone should read the book.

Anne Frank: An inner furnace in our souls
Some quirky calculus seems to rule the story of Anne Frank and her diary. The further time recedes from the pivotal events of the diary's origins, the more people seem interested in Anne as a person, Anne as a Holocaust statement, Anne as a publishing phenomenon, or just Anne as a long-lost tragic friend. I was just thirteen when I read her book, the same age that she started scribbling her thoughts in that famous checked binder with the little metal clasp. Thirteen is an age when childhood lies like freshly cut grass in recent memory, with puberty and adulthood new temptations soon to be savoured. Her original diary seems to kindle some inner furnace in our souls. The magic of the story is that we want to know more, more about Anne, her life, her family, her silent footsteps after the Annex.

Ruud van der Rol and Rian Verhoeven's photographic remembrance of Anne - Beyond the Diary - is a touching and fitting tribute to the Dutch schoolgirl's legacy. Anna's Quindlen's poignant introduction strikes the right emotional notes for what follows. She says Anne's diary has a kind mystical quality for the adolescents who first encounter it and for the adults left with its spiritual aftertaste. The power is so strong that Quindlen refers to the shiver that took hold of her has she saw pictures of the original diary in the van der Rol and Verhoeven book. She speaks for all of us when she says Anne was not just a victim, a fugitive, and a metaphor but an ordinary girl with blemishes, worried about boys, parents, clothes and a post-war future.

The authors should be congratulated for their presentation of rarely seen photographs of Anne Frank and her family. There is Anne's mother, Edith, with baby Anne seemingly a few hours old, in a Frankfurt hospital. There is Mum and Dad on their honeymoon; Anne and Margot as toddlers sitting on Dad's knee; the young girls dressed beautifully out shopping with Mum in downtown Frankfurt. These are happy times: family, friends, movies, a day at the beach. But a sombre bell tolls...

Like melancholy drapes blocking the sunlight, the remainder of the book catalogues the Frank family in hiding as Nazism throws its fetid shadow. There are photographs of That List - not Schindler's - but Anne's. Her name appears on the passenger manifest for the last transport from Westerbork to Auschiwitz and then, sadly, on the final Red Cross declaration. The photographs, accompanied by the simple text, are a revelation. This book comes as close as any to capturing Anne's allure. But Anne in "Beyond the Diary" is still somehow beyond reach. We love her diary because we seem to share so much with her. Her last footprints show, in fact, that we probably share very little...

A companion
This is a great book for anyone who is interested in Anne Frank, but I think to really appreciate it you should read the diary FIRST, otherwise you won't understand the importance of what you are seeing in the pictures.

boring book cliche`
i'm sorry to say this, but i didn't enjoy reading this book. even though it's considered a great book that has actual events that happened, i think that anne frank has been played to many times. if you are looking for a good book about the holocaust, i suggest another book. maybe Alicia: my story by alicia appleman-jurman

Follow-up to the classic
This book shares the pictures of concentration camps and tells what happened to the various members of the Frank family after they were found by the German secret police. It also states that had she survived just a few days longer, Anne would've been alive when the people of the concentration camps were released by the Allied troops. This has some heartbreaking information and pictures in it. It's marketted to kids, but some of the pictures may be a bit too difficult for a child to look at on his or her own. If you get this for a child, sit and explain what they are looking at. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

An outstanding edition of a classic American text
Anyone who has ever taken a literature class in college knows the Norton Critical Editions: an absolutely first-rate version of the text, a healthy supply of contemporary responses and letters, and the best essays yet written about the text. This edition of Benjamin Franklin's "Autobiography" is no exception. The quintessential American Enlightenment figure, Franklin is far more complex than most people think, and far funnier. When it came time to write the Declaration of Independence, the Congress wouldn't give it to Franklin alone, in large part because they were afraid he'd hide a joke in it. One of his most infamous pieces of writing was under the guise of a prostitute being brought before the court for having yet another illegitimate child -- and then attacking the court for making it necessary for her to pursue her profession! And the letter Franklin wrote his own illegitimate son about how to keep a mistress is a classic in and of itself. The only great flaw in the autobiography is that it stops before Franklin ever reaches the Revolutionary War, and thus we don't have the inside story of that perilous time. But anybody wanting to understand Franklin's life, the means to wealth, or the evolution of a brilliant mind will love this text. It's mandatory reading for every American, in my mind.

Poor Richard's Rich Insights
How many books have you read that you remember thirty-six years later? Ben Franklin's insights into principles of self-improvement, and his love for the adventure of life were not only inspiring to me when I discovered his autobiography in the Holmesburg Library in Philadelphia at age 14, but they still remain motivational for me at age 50! Ben Franklin was the Dale Carnegie of his age. He realized that by following basic core value principles, and by constant practice in the adventure of life, he could not only creatively change himself, but he could positively impact those around him as well. Ben Franklin led a purposeful, creative life. I am thankful that he had the foresight to pass his exhuberance along to us in this his autobiography. It was fun to read. I think I'll read it again. Thanks, Ben. ... Read more

Book Description

From "the preeminent historian of the Revolution" (Jonathan Yardley), a groundbreaking study, many years in the making, of Benjamin Franklin the man, Benjamin Franklin the myth, and the roots of American character.

Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.

The problem with this beloved notion of Franklin's quintessential Americanness, Gordon Wood shows us in this marvelous, revelatory book, is that it's simply not true. And it blinds us to the no less admirable or important but far more interesting man Franklin really was and leaves us powerless to make sense of the most crucial events of his life. Indeed, thinking of Franklin as the last American would be less of a hindrance to understanding many crucial aspects of his life-his preoccupation with becoming a gentleman; his longtime loyalty to the Crown and burning ambition to be a player in the British Empire's power structure; the personal character of his conversion to revolutionary; his reasons for writing the Autobiography; his controversies with John and Samuel Adams and with Congress; his love of Europe and conflicted sense of national identity; the fact that his death was greeted by mass mourning in France and widely ignored in America.

But Franklin did become the Revolution's necessary man, Wood shows, second behind George Washington. Why was his importance so denigrated in his own lifetime and his image so distorted ever since? Ironically, Franklin's diplomacy in France, which was essential to American victory, was the cause of the suspicion that clouded his good name at home-and also the stage on which the "first American" persona made its debut. The consolidation of this mirage of Franklin would await the early nineteenth century, though, when the mask he created in his posthumously published Autobiography proved to be the model the citizens of a striving young democracy needed.

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin is a landmark work, a magnificent fresh vision of Franklin's life and reputation, filled with profound insights into the Revolution and into the emergence of America's idea of itself. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

A Scholarly Biography that Gets Behind the Franklin Myths
Benjamin Franklin is often considered the quintessential American. A recent best-selling biography of Franklin is entitled "The First American," and many other biographers have also played up the Americanness of his life. His story is a familiar one to most Americans. Franklin overcame his lowly beginnings through a combination of street smarts and hard work. He was intelligent without being theoretical. He was a social joiner but also wary of traditional class distinctions. Because of this, he seemed to typify what many modern Americans feel is most distinctive about their nation.

Historian Gordon S. Wood splashes cold water on these common assumptions of Franklin's life. Wood shows that in many ways Franklin was not typical of his fellow Americans at all. Once he made himself a success, for example, he stopped working and began to imitate a gentleman. After Franklin moved to Europe and got a taste of the civilized life, it was difficult for him to break away from it and return to America. He often misjudged the opinion of his fellow Americans, sometimes leading too far in front of them and sometimes following too far behind. As a result, he was far more popular in Europe than he was in his home land. After his death, the public grieving in the U.S. was mild compared to that of other revolutionary leaders.

Wood's book is largely a conventional biography that is distinctive from other Franklin biographies only in its interpretation. Wood sees the Sage of Philadelphia as a proto-American, someone who became American only in retrospect as more and more nineteenth-century Americans began to lead lives similar to Franklin's. Like him, they worked in the trades and strove for social respectability and financial success while also maintaining a working class identity. As these self-made men began to predominate, Franklin's life became a model for them, and the popularity among Americans that he never saw in his lifetime became his.

The definitive Franklin
Gordon S. Wood is such a fabulous writer and such a skilled historian that it's impossible to not be impressed by his work. He writes history that reads so smoothly and argues so gracefully that it's impossible to not be convinced. Wood has a comfort zone that he likes to operate in, and all of his books are resident in this zone. It has two components. First, he constructs all his arguments in a "before" and "after" style in order to frame the central points of his thesis. He says, once upon a time things were like this. Then a critical event happened that changed everything. That event, for Wood, is always the Peace of Paris in 1783. But it's not the military or political or economic consequences of the Revolution that Wood insists changed everything. It's the change in social structure and, more to the point, the blurring of social class lines due to social mobility (both physical and economic) that moved America and its people from feudalism to democracy. THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION went something like this, and the current biography of Franklin puts him in this context. It's a view of Franklin in terms of social class. Now, I'm sure Dr. Wood would argue with me, saying that I reduce his theses down into far too simple terms. Granted, I'm not criticizing him. This work, as his others, is a penetrating study and should attract much scholarly and critical acclaim.

A Pleasant Reading
Being a fairly recent Eastern European immigrant I found the book very inspirational. Gordon Wood tells the story of an extraordinary self-made man in rapidly changing times. If I can relate to Benjamin Franklin, everyone else in this country can.

It is also very informative and a nice take on the times when America was founded as a nation. However, I will give it four starts, as I was a little disappointed with how little weight it was given to the Revolution snowballing events.

Focused Biography of Founding Father
Gordon S. Wood has done another great job in his newest work of history, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. This is not in any way a definitive biography but instead is a more focused work, essentially examining Franklin's move from a lover of the British Empire into an American patriot and then, finally, into an American icon, possibly one of American's most resonant. Franklin is always a fascinating tale, as his own Autobiography has shown for centuries, and Wood captures the tale of artisan of lowly origins turned into a diplomat at foreign courts with great skill. The author's look at how Franklin became an icon after his death is very interesting. For those who missed reading the massive biography of Franklin two summers ago, this one is not to be missed.

(Re)constructing Franklin
In the last few years, a number of thorough revisionist biographies have been published, which take Revolutionary Period luminaries and political players as their subjects, meeting with both public and critical success. Take for example David McCullough's John Adams, Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers and Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, not to mention Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin: An American Life: each of these works have contributed to the recent trend in American historical studies to reexamine the American Revolution and its key players from a contemporary historical perspective. Into this mix, Gordon Wood-noted historian of the American Revolution and Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution-has released his latest work The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin.

So, why do we need another biography of Franklin? Gordon Wood's answer: we don't. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin represents little effort on behalf of its author to attempt to provide or refashion a definitive portrait of Franklin's life from self-made printer to world-renown writer, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. Wood's study does not set out to present a new or profoundly nuanced interpretation of Benjamin Franklin the man, but rather dissects the many-layered and convoluted construction of Benjamin Franklin the American symbol, the character of the communal American cultural imagination.

As Wood argues and carefully documents, Franklin's reputation-as canonized during the progressive times of the early 19th century and arguably extending to the present day-did not result from the mutual respect of and commendation from fellow members of the Revolutionary generation. Quite to the contrary, the Benjamin Franklin known to contemporary Americans-the industrious inventor, the master of the aphorism and clever turn of phrase, the self-made and quintessential "American" citizen-appears in Wood's work as a posthumous construction quite at odds with the Franklin so painstakingly working to protect his reputation after returning from his years abroad as a diplomat to both Great Britain and France. Wood, however, digs through the rhetoric of both Franklin's most venomous opponents and his most fervent and loyal supporters to uncover and unravel Franklin's precarious position during and after the Revolutionary War. In the course of doing so, Wood demonstrates that the "Americanization" of Benjamin Franklin owed more to his enduring international reputation, particularly in France, and to the popularity of his Autobiography, which necessarily put forward an image that Franklin himself would endorse.

Though Wood does present a rather thorough account of Franklin's life and achievements before and leading up to the American Revolution, the strength of The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin rests in its depth and analysis of Franklin's participation in the formation of the young American nation. Benjamin Franklin, as his contemporaries perceived him, remained an inscrutable and potentially dangerous emissary for American affairs. Probing letters, official statements and popular press accounts, Wood reconstructs the case both for and against such an interpretation. In effect, Wood understatedly performs an archeological investigation into the factors that most directly influenced the formation of an American popular identity and national work ethos embodied by Franklin, the results of which combine erudite intellectual inquiry with good American storytelling.

This type of historical study, in contrast to the more generalized biographical project, provides Wood the space to reflect upon a specific aspect of Franklin's life in a manner that exceeds the limitations of a more comprehensive survey of the statesman's markedly important and influential achievements and accolades. After reading The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, perhaps most significantly the reader comes away with not only a genuine empathy for Franklin, but also the recognition that, in the book's writing, his wit and candor have found a worthy foil in Wood's able hands. ... Read more

Book Description

This provocative history of the world's most famous anti-Semite--a Detroit Free Press and New York Post bestseller--examines the origins, methods, and consequences of hatred.

How and why did this quintessential American folk-hero and pioneering industrialist become one of the most obsessive anti-Semites of our time-a man who devoted his immense financial resources to publishing a pernicious forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion? And once Henry Ford's virulent media campaign against the Jews took off during the "anxious decade" following World War I, how did America's already splintered Jewish community attempt to cope with the relentless tirade conducted for ninety-one consecutive weeks in the automobile manufacturer's personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent? What were the repercussions of Ford's Jew-hatred extending deeply into the 1930s?

Drawing upon previously uncited oral history transcripts, archival correspondence, and family memoirs, Neil Baldwin answers these and other questions; examining the biases of the men at the inner circle of the Ford Motor Company and disentangling the painful ideological struggles among an elite Jewish leadership reluctantly pitted against the clout and popularity of "The Flivver King."

As the Ford Motor Company celebrates its hundredth anniversary, with anti-Semitism resurgent in Europe and Islamic fundamentalists reading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Henry Ford and the Jews is a riveting biography with new relevance for anyone interested in contemporary history. ... Read more

Reviews (17)

The Last To Know.....
I think I was the last person in the United States to become aware of Henry Ford's anti-semitism.

I make it a practice to study one person a month and I decided as a business builder, Henry Ford was worthy of my attention and study.

I found this particular biography and thought, "OK, this has a completely different approach, let's try it on."

I found Baldwin's passion and zealousness for his topic and his particular slant to be very powerful. As is frequent in such writing, it also became a barrier because every action Ford took became, through Baldwin's eyes, a matter of Ford being the Personification of Evil.

I am not condoning Ford's thoughts, beliefs or behaviors. I am believing that not every action he took was a result of some undercurrent of Anti Semitism.

That said, this book is worth a read due to the level of research Baldwin has done both in this biography and the biography of one of Ford's friends and role models (and less rabidly Anti-Semitic although there was some there) in Thomas Alva Edison.

I just had this thought: I wonder how many business leaders remain staunchly racist... yet it has gone deeply underground in this age.

I wonder how many business (and political leaders) continue to harbor less than transformed thought?

Something to think about... and continue to stand against.

A Comprehensive Examination of a Man and a Problem
Neil Baldwin's look at Henry Ford and his anti-semitic views is an important one. Most people know something about Ford's anti-semitism. However, with this book one gets a full picture of the nature of his prejudice, the way it was expressed, and it's root causes. In addition, Mr. Baldwin has added to the value of this story by covering, in some detail, the responses of various members of the Jewish community to this very big problem. Mr. Ford was an extremely influential American, and as such, it was very important for Jewish leaders to respond to the outrageous and harmful ideas that were expressed in publications (such as The Dearborn Independent) that he was associated with. However, leaders differed with regard to how to best deal with this problem, and indeed it was something that had to be handled carefully.

In some ways, this is a very sad story, for it shows us some of the worst aspects of a man who was and still is revered by many. It also reminds us of how prevalent anti-semitism was in America during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, this is an important story, and Neil Baldwin has told it in a book that combines good writing with outstanding scholarship. I don't think that it will disappoint the serious reader.

Ask yourself these questions
Is Baldwin a Jew?

How it then possible for this text to impartially represent the truth?

When listening or reading it is vitally important to understand the motives of the source before forming your own opinion.

Well worth a read
Neil Baldwin's "Henry Ford and the Jews" is a compelling look at how a genius at one thing --- the mass production of a good automobile --- could become such a dangerous buffoon when it came to another thing --- the mass production of an idea. At some point, our title character ceased to be just "Henry Ford, automaker" and instead became Henry Ford, wealthy and powerful symbol of international antisemitism. Baldwin's portrait of Ford in all his horrible glory is fascinating.

A True History of Henry Ford!
This book by Baldwin gave a searing history of automobile icon
Henry Ford.Baldwin very capably shows one of the pioneers of
American industry to be devoutly anti-semite.Ford himself was the
financier behind a anti-Jewish newspaper that was published in
Michigan.Ford was a fan of Adolph Hitler. Hitler had a portrait of Ford on thew wall in his office.Henry Ford received an award
from Hitler and showed up in person to receive it bringing with him many guests.Charles Linberg and Thomas Watson of IBM declined
the same award.Ford was also able to sell Ford products to the
Nazis receiving a monopoly on the Nazi vehicle market in the military.This book is packed with documented of Henry Ford's
anti-semite activities.Read this you will become better informed.
This is a good book. Buy it. ... Read more

Book Description

The "unwritten" final chapter of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl tells the story of the time between Anne Frank's arrest and her death through the testimony of six Jewish women who survived the hell from which Anne Frank never retumed. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

These women are the definition of courage
This is one of the best books I have ever read. A must read for all ages. These ladies are some of the most courageous people in the world. They perserved knowing that their demise could be any day. But living was too important to them so they dug deep within themselves to keep their spirit alive and they succeeded. Hooray for them!!! Miep Gies is also a very courageous person. She is right up there with these ladies. "Anne Frank Remembered" by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold is also a wonderful book. If you are looking for excellent reading and a time frame for the life of Anne Frank, then by all means read this book. I don't know if I could handle the pressures that these ladies went through to live, and I hope that I never have to endure their suffering, but if I do, I will take these 7 women with me and draw on their strengths and spirit to keep me alive.

Anne Frank the Girl the Legend
After reading Anne Frank the Last Seven Months, I relized how difficult it was for the jews and for any person during this time. I like this book a lot and I recommond reading it if possible. This book makes you feel like you new exactly how that person was feeling. It put you inside the stories the people told. It was a sad story to read because of all the people that died of other peoples differences. That the samething happen to every person that was a 'jew" that the story didn't change. People were hiding out of years before they were sent off to a death camp. They lived in fear of the next day hoping that the Green Police weren't find them. Once they were found they didn't know if they would live to see there family again. The Nazis killed so many people and so many people got disease and got sick. Everyday more love ones were dying and if you were lucky you could be with them as they die as for some was sent to different death camps, you had no idea if you wife, husband, son, daughter, or best friend since were in third grade had died.

Get it!
I read Anne Frank's diary again during my first trip to Amsterdam recently to prepare myself to a visit to the Secret Annex. But the book (and the corny Hollywood adaptation) left me wondering what happened to her after the diary. This book about her last seven months at the concentration camps gives a clear picture of what Anne's life was like through the accounts of the women who encountered her there. I could not put this book down and would sleep at 4 in the morning, read it in bed, in the bathroom, in the car, sometimes it would leave me crying. I am not Jewish and I am only in my 30s but this book touched me a lot (just like Schindler's List) and left me wanting to know more.

Steven Speilberg: here's a perfect movie for you
It's been a few years since I read this book. However, I recently watched the video interviews (Anne Frank Remembered) of the same concentration camp survivors that the author quoted in this heart-wrenching book. This book adds information not before known and is worth reading by anyone who is curious about what life was like for Anne Frank and her family after the diary. Along with Ernst Schnabel's book Anne Frank: A Portrait in Courage, it could form the basis of a great movie which for the first time would show what happened to Anne Frank post-Diary. (written on June 12, AF's birthday)

Touching stories of courageous women.
When I finished reading the diary on Anne Frank I needed to know more about the rest of her life. The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank are stories of women who knew Anne in the concentration camp. It is more about other womens stories than Annes but sometimes includes a bit about her expieriences. ... Read more

Book Description

She found the diary and brought the world a message of love and hope.

It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts....Yours, Anne

For the millions moved by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, here at last is Miep's own astonishing story. For more than two years, Miep Gies and her husband helped hide the Franks from the Nazis. Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their lives each day to bring food, news, and emotional support to the victims.

From her own remarkable childhood as a World War I refugee to the moment she places a small, red-orange, checkered diary -- Anne's legacy -- in Otto Frank's hands, Miep Gies remembers her days with simple honesty and shattering clarity. Each page rings with courage and heartbreaking beauty. ... Read more

Reviews (26)

WHAT WOULD THE WORLD BE LIKE IF WE WERE ALL LIKE MIEP?
Be prepared. This book will take your mind and body back to the war years. You will feel the suffering, not only of the Jews, but the Dutch people under German occupation.

It also serves as an independent witness to many of the events Anne described in her Diary. This was dramatized in a made for television movie about 10 years ago.

Miep and her husband Henk opened their home and hearts to Otto Frank for seven years after the war. They helped preserve his post-concentration camp sanity and gave him strength to live.

Had Miep read the Diary after Anne's capture, she states that she'd have had to burn it since it implicated people as hiders of Jews. Thankfully, Miep did not read it until years later. Even with Otto Frank's post-war encouragement, it was simply too painful for her to read. The miracle of the Diary's survival and gift to the world is due to Miep's remarkable courage and mysterious fate.

A Keeper!
Everyone that has read the Diary of Anne Frank has a pretty good handle on what life was like hiding in 'het achterhuis', but this book describes those 2 years from a different angle; from that of a protector. This book takes you through the life of Miep Gies from her days in Austria, to when she gained her Dutch citizenship and when she, along with the other office staff, hid the 8 Jews in hiding. This book is a must for anyone that has ever read any of Anne Frank's works.

Would you?
I think many of us would like to think that if a family that we know well is in dire need, we would go to extreme measures to help them in any way we can. But if it came down to a life-and-death decision, I wonder how many people would have made the same decision that brave Miep Gies made to help out the Franks. She details this decision, and her years of helping the Franks hide in the little apartment behind her office, in her well-told book "Anne Frank Remembered".

Part memior, part rememberance of Anne herself, this book details the life of Miep, from a little girl born in Vienna, to her migration to Amsterdam. She becomes an office worker in Otto Frank's pectin business, and her history is now set. Soon, due to Hitler's oppresive policies against the Jews, the Franks must go into hiding to survive.

Miep recounts details of her assistance in helping keep the Franks, the Van Daans and Albert Dussel alive. In fact, this book is a brilliant piece of writing to accompany Anne Frank's diary. While Anne details life inside the Annex, we find out from Miep what she was doing outside. Together, they paint a complete picture of the horror and danger of their daily lives. And when Anne's diary stops before that faithful day, Miep's story continues. She bravely tries to bribe the Franks out of captivity to no avail.

Whereas Anne is probably the most "famous" Frank, Miep does talk about her from time to time, knowing that we would want to know her impressions of the little girl. She offers some touching, poignant insights to Anne, making her seem more real, if that's possible. Detailing Anne growing out of her clothes, which Anne domcuments herself in her diary, is a particular moment that shows us Anne having to grow up, imprisioned becuase of her religion and for her safety.

Without a doubt, Miep and all of the people who aided the Franks in the Annex are heroes. This time of history had many thousands of heroes, many of them unsung. Fortuantely, we have a well-documented life of Anne and we can spend as much time as possible with them, thanks to these books.

a way too long novel
do not read this book if you are a surfer and don't want to read a long book. Ya, it was touching but, it was long...

Such a strong woman...
Miep Gies should be remembered as one of the greatest women of all time. Out of sheer love, love for people, she helped in hiding the Frank family along with a few others.

The book tells the entire story of Miep Gies, from her first employment by Anne's father until the final liberation of Holland. The story is told honestly and without a feeling of ego or of her deliberately sounding like the brave woman she was. And it's told in such a way, that you feel a kind of suspense as if you didn't know of the tragedy coming.

Miep is unrelenting in her portrayal of the grimness of life during the German occupation of Holland. It was worse of all for the Jewish people, but it was also hard on the Dutch people. Reading this is an education for those of us who have no idea of how it is to live in an occupied country.

However, you feel the hope in the ending. Also, one realizes how truly important a book that Anne Frank's diary was. This is a very moving and a most important book on its own. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

A classic work
I have read this book many times, and each time I do so, I am struck that Anne began writing this when she was only 13-years-old. It is as fresh today as it was when I read it the first time about 30 years ago.

I am always struck by those who use Anne's quote about people really being good at heart. . . According to Anne's friend, Lies Gosslar, Anne certainly didn't think people were good at heart after being imprisoned at Aushwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Trying to put a happy face on the Holocaust or give it a positive spin is really more than I can stomach.

What do people see in this story?
I have only one thing to say about this story...I thought it was plain STUPID! What is it with people's obsession's with Anne Frank anyway? Her diary is one of the most BORING stories I have ever read. There is nothing appealing about Anne's story. She focuses only on herself and barely explains any of the characters. Overall, this was an AWFUL book and Anne had no impact on me whatsoever.

sad but uplifting
This is one of the most depressing and yet uplifting stories of all time. I just finished a production of the play and I know that there wasn't a dry eye in the audience at curtain call. Anne's statement that "in spite of everything, people really are good at heart" shows that even close to death, love and hope survive. It's a story that everyone should read; it teaches a lot about life.

my heart melted as i felt her pain
The Van Daans, the Franks, and Dussel struggled in the toughest times of their life and grew to become a loving family of friends. Unfortunately, they departed and each died in their own horrible way. I cried when I read it. I know how terrible it must have been, for I am the great grandaughter of Miep. I have heard all the stories and I was really touched. ... Read more

Book Description

Amazon.com

In conjunction with its 100th anniversary, the Ford Motor Company opened its monumental archives to the unfettered research of author/historian Douglas Brinkley. And while the 800-page history that resulted from that work (as well as Brinkley's tireless, amply footnoted source work elsewhere) is comprehensive to a fault, the scope and enduring impact of the industrial colossus wrought by Henry Ford make it often seem like mere introduction. Brinkley's meticulous, enlightened work can't help but find endless fascination with the company's founder, whose presence resonates through every phase of the company's history, from its fitful start (FMC was the third company to bear the Ford name), through the rise of the Model T (still one of the most ubiquitous and revolutionary mechanical contrivances of the last millennia), to its cycles of corporate decay and rebirth (variously via Iacocca's Mustang in the 60's and the technical innovations and potent retrenchment of trans-nationalism in the 90's). Henry Ford remains one of the greatest human paradoxes in a century filled with them: a largely self-taught engineer who couldn't read a blueprint, yet became a mass-production visionary; an employer whose social conscience (and no small amount of shrewd business acumen) doubled the salary of his employees one era, employed thugs to crush their union organizing efforts the next; a world figure who read little, yet published much, including anti-war editorials and vile, anti-Semitic tracts--despite the fact that his monumental manufacturing facilities were designed by Jews whose friendship and professional relationships he cultivated. The enviro-social impact of Ford's industrial innovations continues to loom, and Brinkley hardly ignores them. But his research is largely focused on the rich players (and their often perplexing psychology) of the Ford saga, all-too-human characters whose ambitious empire will continue to cast its long shadows over many a generation to come. --Jerry McCulley ... Read more

Reviews (14)

An Admirable Attempt at the History of an Enigma
Henry Ford was an enigma, and he remains one despite more than 850 pages of text in this fine history of the man and his company. Douglas Brinkley offers a court history of breadth and scope, relying on the rarely accessible Ford Motor Company archives to flesh out stories of the birth of the assembly line, the Model T, union busting in the 1930s, anti-Semitism, and successes with the Mustang, LTD, and Taurus.

Throughout "Wheels for the World" Henry Ford is the force that creates and holds a corporate empire together. Brinkley devotes the first two-thirds of the book to him, exploring the paradoxes in his psyche: a self-taught engineer who created a corporate empire, a high minded entrepreneur in the mold of Robert Owen at one time and an anti-union zealot at another, and a man who used his wealth and power to spout ill-informed and sometimes demagogic ideas. Brinkley's final assessment is well-reasoned and enigmatic.

Get to know the true history of Ford
It takes a true master author to write an 800-page biography of a well-documented and known history while keeping the reader fully engaged like a mystery novel.

I was at first intimated by the size of the book but then pleasantly surprised at how well it was written.

The author takes us through the journey of Henry Ford's life from birth to the creation of Ford Motor all the way to the arrival of the 3rd Ford family member to take over the company in 2002.

What makes this book so good is the fact that the author strikes a perfect balance between giving the reader intimate details of the Henry Ford's day to day life as well as moving the story along.

In the end I believe the author did a fantastic job of capturing the spirit of Ford Motor Company, its struggles, its success, its failures, and its challenges through the life of its leader.

This book is highly recommended as the first car history book you give a young reader.

Wheels for the World
Wheels for the World by Douglas Brinkley is a lengthy, but well written book that details the Ford Motor Company's epic history and many accomplishments. Brinkley offers the reader plenty of information on Henry Ford, the pioneer of mass produced auto manufacturing. He details everything from Ford's instabilities and contradicting behavior to his impeccable business savvy. A major downfall for Wheels for the World is Brinkley's inability to make clean transitions from one idea to the next. The reader gets attached to one idea, and the next thing you know Brinkley has begun an entirely new concept. But, in the end I believe the author did a great job of capturing the struggles and successes of the Ford Motor Company, while also taking us through an interesting journey into the life of an extremely intelligent man in our nation's history. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the nation and the auto-making industry.

Packed with Knowledge!
It would be difficult to conceive of a more detailed corporate history. Author Douglas Brinkley offers an interesting, lucid narrative of Henry Ford's early experiments with the automobile, and his first, unsuccessful companies. He promises and delivers a "warts and all" picture of Ford's history. Brinkley is at his strongest discussing Ford's origins. But the book is also sprawling, diffuse and unfocused, with a somewhat confusing tendency to jump back and forth along the twentieth century timeline. It is more than a biography of Henry Ford, but less than a thorough history of the Ford Motor Company. The author nods in the direction of the technological, managerial and financial forces that have shaped Ford since the 1950s, though he presents Ford's (both man and company) earlier history in vivid detail. The impact of what Henry Ford did and how he did it still shapes industry in the United States. We recommend Brinkley's book for its revealing picture of one of the twentieth century's most influential industrialists.

A Disappointment
I found no mention of Harry Ferguson, the Ford-Ferguson tractor(perhaps the most significant agricultural tractor of the Twentieth Century), or subsequent tractor work by Ford. There was no mention of Dearborn Motors, nor its significance to the Company. ... Read more

Book Description

Available here for the first time in English, this eyewitness account by one of Freud’s earliest students has been rediscovered for twenty-first century readers. Isidor Sadger’s recollections provide a unique window into the early days of the psychoanalytic movement—the internecine and ideological conflicts of Freud’s disciples. They also illuminate Freud’s own struggles: his delight in wit, his attitudes toward Judaism, and his strong opinions concerning lay, non-medical analysts.

As a student, Sadger attended Freud’s lectures from 1895 through 1904. Two years later Freud nominated Sadger to his Wednesday Psychological Society (later called the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society).Sadger, however, was not part of Freud’s inner circle, but more a participant observer of the early years of the psychoanalytic movement and of Freud as teacher, therapist, and clinician.

Sadger was considered one of the most devoted followers of Freud and hoped to become one of Freud’s "favorite sons."At the First Psychoanalytic Congress held in Salzburg in 1908, Sadger was chosen to be one of the principal speakers along with Freud, Jones, Adler, Jung, Prince, Riklin, Abraham, and Stekel, an honor that bespeaks Sadger’s early role in the movement.But Freud and many of his disciples were also openly critical of Sadger’s work, calling it at various times overly simplistic, unimaginative, reductionist, orthodox, and rigid.

In 1930 Sadger published his memoir, Sigmund Freud: Persönliche Erinnerungen.With the rise of Nazism and World War II, the book became lost to the world of psychoanalytic history.Recently, Alan Dundes learned of its existence and mounted a search that led him around the world to one of the few extant copies—in a research library in Japan. The result of his fascinating quest is Recollecting Freud, a long-lost personal account that provides invaluable insights into Freud and his social, cultural, and intellectual context. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

lots of great info
We read this book in our homeschool history class. It's great for colonial unit study. Even mom learned a few new things about Ben Franklin! How cool is that!

Another winner
These picture book biographies are great for lower elementary students. Big colorful pictures and packed with information. Great for colonial unit study. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Smart Ben
I thought that it was a good book because I like biographies. I especially liked the part when he went to the Latin School and he couldn't say the poem because the school master gave Ben the wrong poem. I recommend this book to you if you like to read biographies. I also recommend this book if you think that a president's life would be interesting.

If you are the type of person who loves to read about famo..
us historians of our past...I highly recommend this biography of a young printer, Benjamin Franklin. Stevenson talks about the bigger of Ben's life, however going into smallest details in ocations(In my opinion: Like all biographers should.)This is a small price for a large book and may be ordered from Amazon.com! ... Read more

Book Description

1922. What is the idea? The beginning; What I learned about business; Starting the real business; Secret of manufacturing and serving; Getting into production; machines and men; Terror of the machine; Wages; Why not always have good business?How cheaply can things by made?Money and goods; Money, master or servant? Why be poor? Tractor and power farming; Why charity? Railroads; Things in general; Democracy and industry; What we may expect. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Fun to read insights from a great industrialist
This book, like a lot of books in their period, does not focus on one main subject but is a collection of articles/personal point of views on business matters. What struck me most is how "uncluttered" his mind is and his clear passion for doing things in the most efficient way possible. Granted, the writing style at that time can be a bit tedious and long winded, but he certainly does not mince words and his style is "refreshing" amidst all the jargons and words you see in today's business books and magazines. He shows that how an intensely focused on increasing the buying power of the customer, combined with a relentless desire to be as efficient as possible can be enormously benefiical to society. For me, it's interesting to compare him with Michael Dell's book "Direct from Dell"...you'll be amazed with the striking similarities with both of their visions...only one is supplying a motor car and the latter personal computers.

Don't be too mistaken
One must remember Ford's other novels, "The International Jew", and that like Woodrow Wilson, he too was an avid white supremicist. I do think the world could have easily done with him. And for those who romanticize his business ethic, remember that he had also employed a private militant security detail that violently suppressed strikes and unions. Maybe Henry Ford isn't at all the great one he writes himself out to be?

"A fascinating look at the works of an early industrialist"
It was amazing to read that many of the ideas and ideals around the turn of the twentieth century are still used today.Ford goes into great detail describing the origination of the Ford motor company, the labor force, the assembly line, and financial situations of the company.At a time when most of the male workers across the country were working for fifty cents a day, Ford incorporated a minimum wage of from three to five dollars a day.Henry Ford did a good job writing this book as well.There were several examples of sage advice include which are quoted by speakers and writers to this day.He was truly a visionary, business minded genius.The world was certainly improved by his presence.I'm looking forward to reading other of his works in the future.

Nothing changes
Sometimes with the pace of business we don't take the time to review the thoughts and concepts of the great people of the past. When I read this book I was amazed at his level of thinking. We tend to believe that "our" generation is always coming up with the great thoughts and ideas. If this is your thinking you need to step back 100 years or so to the life and times of Henry Ford. All we are doing is reinventing what he did. ... Read more

Book Description

The day Richard Feynman died, students at the California Institute of Technology hung a banner across the face of its library that read, simply, "We love you, Dick." To students of physics all over the world, Feynman was living proof that to lead a life in science you do not need ice water for blood and the mind of a Cray computer. This was a man who combined practical joking, safe-cracking, and bongo-playing with superlative teaching and brilliant insights.Although everyone knows that Feynman was a great scientist, few people could tell you even the name of the work for which he is acknowledged. The name of Hawking is associated with black holes, Darwin with evolution, Einstein with relativity. But Feynman? He was just a "scientist," which is ironic since his greatest work was actually in the area of quantum electrodynamics, a subject of enormous fascination to non-scientists today.Arguably the greatest physicist of his generation--and undoubtedly one of the most eccentric--Feynman's contributions are well illustrated in Richard Feynman: A Life in Science, and readers are sure to grasp his remarkable contribution to scientific understanding through the book's friendly and accessible style.
The biographical format offers an excellent way for non specialist readers to explore one of the more complex worlds of science.
Richard Feynman's own collection of essays Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman was a national bestseller.
... Read more

Reviews (9)

A thoroughly enjoyable introduction to Feynman
I can't remember ever reading a biography quite as enjoyable. The authors are to be congratulated for their perfect blend of scientific and personal anecdotes. You won't find any of Feynman's lectures here, but you will come to understand why Feynman is so revered. The author's write, "Does the world really need another book about Richard Feynman? We think so, or we wouldn't have written it." I agree with them, and I'm sure you will too. A wonderful book.

An excellent, balanced biography of Richard Feynman
ÒRichard Feynman--A Life in ScienceÓ is a welcome addition, another view from yet another aspect. Other biographers have stressed different sides of Richard Feynman--magician, joker, non-conforming oddball, but this one is true to its subtitle, focusing on Feynman the scientist. For that was what Feynman was, first and foremost--incredibly inventive, irreverent and unconventional, yes, but underlying it all, an inquiring mind, a physicist of the very best. If you have more than a nodding acquaintance with science, and want to know what made such an extraordinary person tick (not that weÕll ever know it all), this is the one to read.

Well worth reading
Richard Feynman was clearly a giant among giants. He was also the most human of beings. Quantum electrodynamics and related topics can be among the most esoteric of any. Writing a book that adequately portrays such a variety of topics can be a forbidding task. This book meets the challenge admirably. While much if not most of the material can be found elsewhere, the clarity of the descriptions and explanations of the technical topics is excellent. Well worth reading.

an amateurish biography rehashing old topics
I love anything Feynman, like a great many people out there, but I found this book to be depressingly amateurish. The authors are overly infatuated with their subject and seem intent on breathlessly convincing us how wonderful Feynman was, as if we couldn't figure it out for ourselves.

To me, the most annoying feature of the book was the endless direct quotes from other Feynman books. Just what service is this book providing?

I wouldn't be so harsh if it weren't for the fact that Glieck's "Genius" has already covered all of the topics presented here, and with much more clarity and detail. I have trouble justifying why another biography was necessary. Without "Genius," this book would probably be more palatable.

The great thing that "Genius" did that this book never attempts, is to make Feynman human. Yes he was brilliant, yes he was funny, yes he was an incredible teacher. But he had a dark side as well, and "Genius" explores that without flinching.

In the end, I'd recommend passing this one up and getting "Genius".

Problematic but readable

(...Part Two:)

This brings us to the Gribbin's rationale for writing yet "another book about Richard Feynman." Thing is, Feynman had one whale of a good time doing physics. He did it because it was fun, and when it wasn't fun, he didn't do it, instead dabbling in fields as diverse as biology, computing and bongo drumming. He was also, hands down, the finest teacher of physics who ever lived. As a first-year physics undergraduate myself, my sharpest memory before I left that field was of sitting alone in dreary, windowless room on the second floor of the physics building and popping in a videocassette of something called The Feynman Lectures. I slumped down in the chair, prepared to be bored into madness, doing this only because a good friend asked me to.

When the tape ended about an hour later, I blinked as I came out of a trance and finally brought my jaw back up, and realized that I had been in the presence of greatness. It was a performance, not a lesson, an exposition of physical principles delivered by a guy so nutso in love with the topic that oftentimes his voice choked with barely-repressed laughter. He had a clarity of style so compelling you couldn't resist absorbing the knowledge if you tried. The Lectures have since become classics, along with written compilations of other talks that have gone on to become best-selling books.

The Gribbins set themselves the task of bringing out these other sides of Richard Feynman, and in that sense they succeed only barely. First, there is really nothing new in this book that hasn't been dealt with elsewhere, and better, most notably by James Gleick in his book, Genius.

Second, while a great of simplification is absolutely necessary to convey some sense of the topic without overwhelming the novice, there are many statements in this book that are unnecessarily absolute, definitive and downright misleading. Telling us that QED explains "everything there is to explain about interactions involving electrons and photons [and] everything there is to explain about weak interactions" is inappropriate, giving us the impression that, on the day QED was published, all research in this area came to a screeching halt.

Third, and perhaps most unforgivably, you quickly come to realize that this book is less a careful examination of a man's life and work than it is a fawning, sycophantic adoration that attempts to elevate a mere mortal into the status of near-deity. This completely non-critical worship (of a man neither of the Gribbins ever met) becomes wearing and tedious after a while, especially when the authors provide testimonials from other notable scientists that add nothing of substance to the idolization, but seem to be some kind of attempt to externally validate their opinions, as though they themselves may have realized they were overdoing it and brought in evidence to prove to us they weren't kidding.

And just when we think we've had about enough of that, they crank it up another notch, this time in the form of a competition to see who among the elites of physics was the very best, starting on page 189. We learn that Feynman made more major contributions in a greater number of decades than any other physicist, including Einstein. We learn that, had the Nobel committee had their heads screwed on correctly, Feynman would rightfully have won three prizes, not just one. And just in case the clearly superior box score is still not evident, we learn that Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant Nobelist who shared a secretary with Feynman at Caltech, was really a somewhat nasty sonofagun who was more interested in looking smart than being smart and, if you read between the lines, probably didn't really deserve his own Nobel prize.

Well, then: why do I think you should read this book? Because I feel that anything that has an outside chance of getting nonscientists to think about the quantum world is worth pursuing.

When I was in elementary school, we had a series of about a hundred biographies of well-known Americans: Knute Rockne, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Glenn Cunningham, etc. Geared for kids, these books were breezy, easy editions that read more like public relations releases than serious studies of people's lives. But we read them and, in many cases, they stuck with us when we got older and spurred us on to read more serious works about these people.

Richard Feynman - A Life in Science reads a lot like those books. I've read nearly all of John Gribbin's books on physics and he is the John Grisham of the field, coincidence of name notwithstanding. The best way for the amateur to come to the physics is through the people who made the physics, and the Gribbins do a reasonably good job of interweaving the two. There is a great deal of oversimplification of the science, but the fact is that there is no other way to do it and keep the difficult mathematics out of it. So, in the sense of introducing you to an extraordinary character (when Feynman got bored during his work on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II, he cracked top-security safes just for laughs), and extraordinary science, the book has merit, and won't tax your brain too much.

However, if you're willing to tax your brain just a wee bit more, here's a much better idea: Read Genius by James Gleick, and In Search of Schroedinger's Cat by John Gribbin. The former is the best yet look at Feynman's work and life, and the latter may be the best single-book introduction to quantum physics for "the average Joe" you're likely to come across. My criticism of A Life in Science aside, perhaps only Isaac Asimov rivals Gribbin in his ability to translate the most arcane of scientific theories into breezy readabilty for popular consumption.

... Read more

Book Description

Few would argue that Richard Feynman was one of the greatest American-born theoretical physicists of the twentieth century, and fewer still would dispute that he was the most iconoclastic. In the words of the eminent mathematician Mark Kac, geniuses are of two kinds: the ordinary, and the magicians. Feynman was a magician of the highest caliber. No one could guess how his mind worked, how he could make transcendental leaps of the imagination so fearlessly. A true original, Feynman was both an inspired, Nobel-prize winning pioneer, and a born showman. He never lost sight of his vision of science as "a long history of learning how not to fool ourselves."

The Beat of a Different Drum is a superb account of Feynman's life and work, encompassing a singular career that spanned from the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos to the frontiers of our understanding of the universe. The first biography to offer deep insight into both Feynman's scientific achievements and his personal life, it is written by Jagdish Mehra. An accomplished physicist and historian of science in his own right, Mehra knew Feynman for thirty years, and their friendship deeply informs all aspects of the book. Feynman invited Mehra to spend three weeks with him shortly before his death in 1988, and after Feynman died, following a ten year battle against cancer, Mehra interviewed almost eighty of his friends and colleagues. They share their recollections of Feynman from his precocious childhood in Queens, New York, to his final days, painting an unforgettable portrait of a scientist who insisted throughout his life on taking the whole of nature as the arena of his science and his imagination. Mehra writes clearly and comprehensively about the theoretical and technical aspects of Feynman's achievements: his crucial role in the development of the atomic bomb; his association with Hans Bethe at Cornell, where he worked out his famous path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, and went on to develop the Feynman diagrams, so ubiquitous in quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, and statistical mechanics; and the full range and depth of his work from 1950 until shortly before his death at the California Institute of Technology.

Here, too, are intimate glimpses into the development of Feynman's inner life, including his devoted relationship with his extraordinary father, a self-taught uniform salesman, and his first marriage, to his boyhood sweetheart, Arline, whom he married knowing that she had only a short time to live. Feynman was an eyewitness to some of this century's key moments of scientific discovery, and Mehra devotes an entire chapter to Feynman's more philosophical reflections on the implications of these discoveries. Flamboyant and impatient, but dedicated to his vision of a better world through cooperation and the fearless pursuit of scientific truth, Feynman emerges here as a genius whom fellow Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger remembered as "an honest man; the outstanding intuitionist of our age and a prime example of what may lie in store for anyone who dares to follow the beat of a different drum." ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Complementary reading for Feynman "fans"
I have read quite a number of biographical books of Richard Feynman, and Jagdish Mehra has done a good job I reckon. I am myself a great enthusiast of Feynman's way od thinking about science and other things, and this book provides one with bits and pieces that I can't recall I found in any of the other biographies (Gribbins, Gleick). I am not familiar with Ralph Leighton's books about Feynman, but Mehra's book is definitely a great one, specially the first parts which describe richard's childhood, elementary and high school, and college days. It really tells the story of the making of an outstanding scientist. I recommend it to those interested in learning more about the life and specially the work, mainly in QED, of such a great icon in physics.

An awful compendium
The book is already out of print, which indicates a collective
wisdom of the technical readership. As others (e.g., "zero
stars") have pointed out, this is a carelessly compiled
assortment of facts. And it is too bad, because Feynman
deserves a fine technical biography. And there do exist
excellent books on Feynman's life and work. Gleick's "Genius"
is a masterful personal biography (Gleick is a fine writer
for the technically literate: e.g., see his "Chaos").
Schweber's "QED and the men who made it" is an excellent
historical presentation of QED, in which of course Feynman
plays a major role. But Mehra's book fails in all aspects.
In particular, the technical parts are disorganized and
full of errors. I gave up half way through the book
in disgust.

If you want to know about Feynman's life and personality, see