Books Anonymous

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

The Prince - Machiavelli

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

Art of War - Sun Tzu

Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning spoke to me on a deeper, more emotional level than any song, movie, book, or work of any kind ever has. Frankl takes the reader through the day-to-day life within a Nazi concentration camp, depicting how people survived under extreme conditions and explaining how they persevered with all the odds stacked against them. His ultimate conclusion is actually quite simple: if you can find a "why," you can endure any "how." If you can find a reason to live, or something to hold onto, then it will get you through the darkest of times: in his own case, Frankl held on to the hope of being reunited with his wife. Now, whenever I face a rough patch in life, I turn to a few of Frankl's words for guidance: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." This statement reminds me that people are not defined by circumstances, but by how they respond to those circumstances. Humans have the power to control their own destinies, whether...