A review by michaelkerr
Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything by Viktor E. Frankl

4.0

This is a remarkably current book, despite being based on a series of lectures delivered in 1946--a scant eleven months after the author was liberated from a Nazi concentration camp. The book is divided into three parts (not including intro and outro), in which Frankl builds on his subject of finding meaning in life. The first section is the heaviest going, feeling more like a philosophy lecture than the fresh immediacy evident in his most famous work, Man's Search for Meaning. Section one focuses on the value of life. The second section is decidedly snappier and deals with finding meaning in suffering. It is the final, third section which really sings for me. Here Frankl puts it all together and illustrates the ideas he has been developing with examples from his own life. And what a life. This is a man who proved that it is possible to choose your own responses even in the face of the unimaginable; it's safe to say he knows a thing or two about saying yes to life.