Engrossing. I was taken by surprise as I read Anne's diary. I was expecting to find lots of historical detail about the Holocaust. There is some of that. I was expecting to read the disjointed narrative of loose events. This diary had some of that, too. However, her narrative is a succinct and intimate portrait of two Jewish families, the Franks and the Van Daans, and an unmarried dentist. The diary does begin before her family goes into hiding, on June 12, 1942, but by July 9, Anne begins to chronicle the vicissitudes of the aforementioned families, and her personal reflections. Instead of politics and war, Anne describes quarrels between herself with her mother, Mrs. Van Daan, and Dussel (the dentist), between the Van Daans and the Franks, and between Mrs. Van Daan and Dussel. What makes these accounts astonishing is that Anne describes these quarrels with the irony and maturity of a full-fledged writer, and her tone makes any reader recall the ironies of a Jane Austen narrative (I may go as far as to compare the relationship between Anne and her mother with that of an Elizabeth Bennet with her silly mother in Pride and Prejudice). Only that this is nonfiction, and thus, her rivalry with her mother may be a situation that other teenagers may easily relate to. If Freud had this diary in his hands, he may even go as far as to point out that Anne has an Electra complex (the reverse of the Oedipus complex). Anne makes very clear that she cannot stand her mother and even claims to hate her. She may have modified this "hate" a year and a half later in the same diary, but she still accepts that she can live without her and that she cannot profess the motherly love. Again, she treads in Jane Austen territory when she claims on February 8, 1944 that her father is not in love with her mother, and that he kisses her the way she kisses them. If this had been fiction, one could find parallels with some Austen novels. Equally astonishing is the level of maturity with which she analyses her parents' matrimonial situation, even if her conclusions were wrong and she was just biased toward her father. In likewise manner, she describes her relationship between herself and Mrs. Van Daan, and the Van Daans. Only a few weeks after their arrival at the secret annex, on September 2, 1942, Anne describes a quarrel between the couple and calls their son lazy, and on September 21, she calls Mrs. Van Daan "unbearable." Her antagonism toward Mrs. Van Daan will be one of her recurring topics throughout the diary. There is also plenty of conflict between her and Dussel with whom she has to share her room; and finally, when she is fourteen and a half, and in love with Peter Van Daan, she turns her adolescent rage against her own father in a letter defending her independence from parental intrusion and her right to see Peter as often as she liked. She may regret this afterwards, but this rebellion shows us an outstanding character trait of hers, an indomitable spirit, and one of the major themes in this diary: generational conflict; the world of adults against youngsters. Since the very beginning, Anne finds her privacy and free will threatened, not only by the external forces of the Nazis, but also by her mother, her sister Margot, Mrs. Van Daan, and Dussel. When on March 2, 1944 she writes, "We aren't allowed to have an opinion" teenagers all over the world will sympathize. Her musings about relationships between youngsters and adults, however, must not be confused with mere griping; her voice is carried by a balance between passion and reason. Along with the threat of parental intrusion upon her freedoms, she talks in depth about sexuality and the need for courage in the face of adversity; the importance of work and.having goals in life; the roots of happiness; the importance of religion (no matter which religious doctrine one follows); the unfortunate growth of anti-Semitism, and her love for Holland. Each one of her discussions are appropriate for teenagers and adults as she speaks with wisdom. In sexuality, she advocates for sexual education at a young age. She feels no shame for her periods and openly confesses on January 6, 1944 that she is "always looking forward to the time when I'll feel that secret inside me once again." And when she is falling in love with Peter, she announces on February 12, 1944 "I think spring is inside me." In matters of love, she does sound more radical when she claims on March 2, 1944 "Losing your virtue doesn't matter, as long as you know that for as long as you live you'll have someone at your side who understands you..." But the way she reflects on these issues throughout the diary show a desire to balance out her natural teenage impulses with the reasoning of a maturing adolescent, not a rebel without a cause. Anne also talks about her literary ambitions and she does show her knack for writing with skill. There is a tone of irony in an entry subtitled "Peeling Potatoes," August 10, 1943. Once you've read this section you'll discover that it is more than about peeling potatoes. A clever story is subtitled "Ode to My Fountain Pen: In Memoriam" found on the November 11, 1943 entry. It's about the loss of her fountain pen. She even makes the most out of scary situations when she writes about an attempted break-in into the factory where they are hidden as if she were narrating a suspenseful story. In addition, on many occasions she shows us the sensibility of a poet as she connects with nature even within her confinement: "As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that you're pure within and will find happiness once more" she states on February 23, 1944. Later on, on March 7, 1944, she claims her right to beauty in the face of misfortune: "If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance. A person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery." This does not mean that Anne's diary has nothing to do with the war or with anti-Semtism. Without these two, without the Nazi menace, Anne would have discovered these things sooner in a freer environment (it took her almost two years to explore love and friendship with Peter), she would have developed her skills as a journalist, a poet, and a writer, had not the Nazis and the war existed. And yet, in spite of the overwhelming presence of the Nazis, anti-Semitism, and war, Anne's greatest triumph was being able to reveal the heart of an adolescent with frankness and honesty. Like the great writer of fiction, Jane Austen, Anne Frank found in the tidbits of her conflicts with adults, their everyday quarrels, her bodily needs and intimacy, her desire for affection and love, their disagreements over politics, the voice of all humanity. It is for these reasons, that this diary endures among classics and among must reads for our youth. A good companion for this book, also sold on Amazon, is the Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography, written by Sid Jacobson, and illustrated by Ernie Colon, because of the historical background for the anti-Jewish laws, the rise of Hitler and Nazis in Germany and Europe, the mass migration of Jews to other parts of the world, genealogical maps of Anne's family, and a map of the secret annex. It also has a timeline of events at the end of the story. Also, some parts of the diary are narrated in graphic format. I recommend both books together.

Decades ago, my school had us read what I now know was small collection of sanitized portions of Anne Frank's diary. I recall my emotions then were rather nonplused in nature. Upon reading this "Definitive" version of Anne Frank's diary, what we have instead is a page-turning, emotionally gut-wrenching, yet emotionally common story of a most uncommon young woman, enduring the most extreme of conditions possible. Of course, we all know the ending, which makes many of Ms. Frank's long-term hopes, wishes, and desires all the more inspiring, intriguing, and dispiriting. Ms. Frank repeatedly hoped that she would be able to write a book based on her diary, which she tentatively titled "The Secret Annex." Well, Ms. Frank accomplished much more than simply writing a book: it has become one of the most well-known books around the world. As someone who became a teacher in his second career, I find it amazing that someone so young as Ms. Frank (13-15 years of age) could have written so well, so introspectively, so worldly, and so authentically, especially in the form of a diary. I cannot think of a single student I taught in 13 years who could write as well as Ms. Frank did. While I started reading this book with trepidation, given my experience reading only a selection of the diary decades ago, I would now say that this book is essential to understanding the Jewish experience during World War II. For a broader perspective, I would pair it with "The Sisters of Auschwitz," which is similarly based on hiding in the Netherlands, and a family that tangentially crossed paths with the Frank family upon their almost simultaneous capture.

The diary of Anne Frank is still a major cultural touchstone, almost 70 years after it was written. Even in the past year we've had controversies about Justin Bieber's ill-considered message left at the Secret Annex, or the "Hipster Anne Frank" Twitter feed. And then, of course, there are always the Truthers, primarily neo-Nazi types, eager to claim that the entire diary was made up out of whole cloth after the war. This review is of The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. The original version published in the US in the mid-'50s was edited by Otto Frank, Anne's father, who was the only Annex resident to survive the Holocaust. That edition removed a lot of Anne's deeper thoughts about her own family and her own maturation process. The Definitive Edition re-instates that material, but is still a combination of Anne's personal diary, and the version that she herself rewrote in the Annex in 1944 with an eye toward publication after the war (complete with pseudonyms). There is also The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, evidently the unexpurgated text of her personal diary, which I have not yet encountered. The diary begins in June 1942, centering on Anne's school life and on the restrictions imposed on Dutch Jews during German occupation. A month later, she and her family go into hiding, and are soon joined by the Van Pels family and, later, by Dr. Pfeffer, an ill-mannered dentist. With eight people living in such a cramped space, personal conflicts soon emerge, and Anne chronicles these in great detail. It's to Anne's credit (and she was only between the ages of 13 and 15 when she wrote) that she's able to view the conflicts from multiple angles - and, as the youngest person in hiding, she was often the target of unwanted criticism from her fellow refugees, so her objectivity and empathy are remarkable. From the Annex windows, and from the reports of their non-Jewish helpers, Anne chronicles what's going on in the outside world - the forced disappearances of the Jewish population, the reports of concentration camps and death chambers, and the ever-so-slow liberation of Nazi-occupied territory by the Allies. D-Day and its aftermath in June 1944 gives the Annex residents false hope, bitterly false hope, that they can outlast the Nazis and emerge from hiding. At the same time, Amsterdam is literally starving under German occupation, and the warehouse and offices in which the Annex is housed is too tempting for burglars, so it is hard for their presence to remain a secret forever... For the first 18 months in hiding, Anne's diary is somewhat sparse, with many months containing only two to three entries. Interestingly, the Franks and the other Annex residents were assimilated rather than observant Jews, and the diary spends more time discussing Christmas than Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. I don't think I'd been aware of that before. About half the material in this version comes from 1944 alone. Anne's musings on religion, the Jewish cause (in spite of her lack of personal observance), feminism, her own personality (she famous described herself as "a bundle of contradictions"), and her relationship with Peter Van Pels, the teenage boy in the Annex, are remarkably strong, and call out across the years to today's reader. The destruction of her potential by the Nazis (she died of typhus in a concentration camp weeks before its liberation by the Allies) remains sickening. Even after 70 years, this remains one of the most important wartime chronicles, and one of the most honest, heartfelt memoirs, ever written.

Please do yourself and to those who went through such a horror atrocious time a favor and read Anne Frank's diary. I believe we will never live what those people lived. I have no words to describe how I felt reading her diary. Anne Frank was so mature for her age and so wise. It's beautiful to read how she addresses people's behaviour, female vs male role in her society, and criticizes lots of it with knowledge and wisdom. Anne Frank was a feminist since a very young age and probably she didn't even know about feminism. It's sad to read the emotional torture she experienced while hiding in the presence of many people she didn't feel she belonged to. The minimum we should do is to make sure we remind ourselves of this gruesome, atrocious time and be grateful we were not one of them. We should be grateful that we have everything and we should think twice before complaining about anything in life. I cannot imagine the terror and cruelties they suffered. It was torture just living in hiding for 2 years, but getting caught was unimaginable for them. How did people consent to that? How did people allow those atrocities to happen?

La relación calidad/precio es muy buena. El libro ya lo conocía en español, pero sirve muchísimo en idioma inglés para el aprendizaje de este idioma.

Livro muito “bom”,bom entre aspas pq n é uma história boa,mas vale a pena pelo conhecimento!!!!vocabulário fácil até,recomendo pra qm tá começando a ler em inglês..mas o livro é meio parado então a pessoa tem q ter calma..é como se fosse uma série, acontece tudo devagar, até pq não é algo fictício é uma história real!! N recomendo pra quem tá comendo agr a ler!! Envio super rápido 1 semana

A very inspiring book. Must to be read by everyone

Doesn't make sense to review contents of the book on amazon, especially since it's a diary