but this drug is not withdrawn when they walk on to the killing floor and that means that when that animal is killed and meat is sold to safeway or what, the drug's in there. >> this weekend on afterwards, martha rosenberg looks behind scene of the food and drug administration industries and finds regulatory lapses and government complicity in undermining the public health. born with a junk food deficiency, sunday night at 9:00, part of book tv this weekend on c-span2. >> history bookshelf features popular american history writer of the past decade airs on american history tv every weekend at this time. next, francine prose talks about her book "anne frank, the book, the life, the afterlife" which examines the impact that anne frank's diary's had on the history and understanding of the holocaust. it was 70 years ago on july 6, 1942, that 13-year-old anne frank and her family went into hiding from the nazis in

amsterdam. 1944 they were caught and sent to concentration camps. anne frank died in a concentration camp in march 1945 at age 15. >> well, today's the official publication date of the book, so i feel you've all come to celebrate with me. so thank you. i thought i would talk briefly about how the book came to be written and what i had in mind and what i discovered, and then i'll just read you little tiny little snippets from various places in the book and talk about the context from which this snippets come. i -- the book really began about three or four years ago, i think. i had begun writing a book, a novel from the point of view of a 13-year-old girl, and the whole point of reading like a writer, which was mentioned, was that if you're going to write something, you should read something. if you're going to write something, read the best thing about that subject ever written. so i asked myself, what's the

best thing ever written about a 13-year-old girl? and i realized it was actually the best thing ever written by a 13-year-old girl and it was the diary of anne frank. i went back and reread it. i was struck. of course i read it as a kid and loved it. i figured out when i was writing this i was about 8 or 9 when i read it for the first time i was, you know, like most writers, i was a big precocious reader. and i loved the book as a kid. so but when i read it as an adult, and especially as a writer, i realized certain things that i could not have possibly known as a child. i realized what, well, just to put it simply, what a great work of literature it was. i mean i had thought, as most people think that it was just a kind of spontaneous diary, little girl wrote under terrible unimaginably terrible circumstances, and that she had written a little check diary, filled it, and then when the

family was arrested the diary was found and transcribed and published and so forth. well, what i discovered, and i'm going to read a section about that, was that nothing could have been further from the truth. anne frank was a conscious literary artist, she wanted her book to be published. she rewrote her entire book. she was aware of literary technique and she had -- she was a natural writer and at the same time because she was such a reader, she had a sense of literature. so she went back and went back to the beginning during her last four, five months in the attic and rewrote the book from scratch. so all of these things that i discovered as i was writing it made the book a very different book than what i imagined. and made me think about something a book which i thought somehow that i knew everything there was to know about, made me think about it in a completely different way, and i thought that i would write a book that i would, hope, help reads are think about it in a completely different way. the other thing that i had in

mind was to try and figure out for myself, really, how this extraordinary thing had happened, that is, a book by a child, a book written by a girl between the ages of 13 and 15, how this book had become a universal, international icon. how a little girl's diary had become a book that's read, translated into dozens of language, has sold tens of millions of copies, is taught in schools all over the world, and for many people is their first, especially for students, is their first introduction to the holocaust, that whole period of history, to what happened. so it seemed -- if you think about it, by now we're used to the fact that it seems obviously quite normal to us, but if you think about it for a moment, the wondrousness of it strikes you all over again, that is a child's diary becoming this -- excuse me -- international,

widely read, beloved work of literature. also, i was struck by the fact that in 20, 30 years, most of the people, all of the people perhaps who have witnessed this time, would no long be alive. but we would still continue to know, people in the future would continue to know, the names of all of the millions and millions of people murdered, the names of those eight people who lived in that secret annex would stay with people forever. and again because of the work of a little girl. so i started to do research. i read the diary. i reread the diary. i started to think about the diary. and so i'll read you little bits from this which will give you a clearer idea. i thought i would just talk but then i thought i've spent years trying to put it in the clearest possible way on the page. so i'm going to read a little bit and then talk to you about what they come from. so here's the first.

the book is organized, the sections are -- well, you know the book, the life, the afterlife. so it begins really with an introduction and then the life. there's a whole section about the biography of anne frank and then the book, how the book was found, the publication history of the book, which was a whole other story because it turned out, as some of you may know, no one wanted to publish the book, no one in amsterdam wanted to publish the book. finally, because it was written about in a dutch newspaper by two dutch intellectuals a dutch publisher approached otto frank and agreed to push live it there. it came out in france and germany but there were no takers here in the united states and in britain to publish it. so i'll read you little section about that. and then, once it came out, it became an instant best-seller because, well, i'll read you that, too, because -- because there was a whole long,

complicated, droo mamatic awful history surrounding -- basically surrounding the way in which the book got made in a play. an american writer named meyer levin who was jewish, who had written a couple of novels and memoirs, not great successes. he was too old to enlist in the army in world war ii and so instead he joined the press corps and was present at the liberation of bergen-belsen where anne died and he wrote late that standing over the mass graves at bergen-belsen he felt that a voice would arise from among the dead really to tell the story. and when he read the diary of anne frank in french, his wife gave him a copy, the french edition, which a gift she would later come to regret. he became obsessed with anne frank. he began to think this was the

voice he had waited to hear. so he wrote otto frank a letter, he became friends with otto frank. he offered to find otto -- help otto find an american publisher for the diary. after otto had found a publisher in a way that i will read to you, meyer levin kind of came back into the scene and said that he was the perfect person to adapt the book for the screen and for the stage. and again, as he, himself, said he wrote a book about this called "the obsession" he became obsessed with the diary to the point at which he almost felt as if he had written the diary. and while he was trying to sell the book to hollywood and to broadway, he was agenting the book, he at the same time got asked for, and received, the assignment to review the book for the front page of the "new york times" book review. now, that would be a kind of

definition of a conflict of interest. we don't really think that people -- that the book's agent should be reviewing them for the front page of "the new york times" book review but in fact what happened meyer levin wrote this rave review. by the end of that week, the book was a best-seller in the united states. and as the book became more and more popular, the people who were -- who wanted to turn it into a play began to realize they could get very famous and successful writers involved, lillian held man became involved, arthur miller, and little by little meyer levin was edged out of negotiations. so this resulted in lawsuits and accusations of betrayal and the kind of bitter controversy between meyer levin and otto. so that's a whole section. then there's a whole other section about the film and how the play was turned into a film.

then -- then, of course, then the book became a subject -- and i have to tell you this was the most unpleasant and difficult section for me to write. the book was taken up by holocaust deniers who -- who said it was a forgery, who said that uh-oh frank had written the book to make money and i can't begin to tell you how unpleasant it was to read their -- just vile, disgusting accusations against anne frank and her father and the book. the final part of the book is about how the book has been used in the schools and taught in the schools. it's one of the most widely taught books in the united states. it's also one of most widely censored books in the united states. so for all sorts of reasons. and finally, the last chapter, which i'll read you a little bit of, i taught the book -- i teach at bard college -- and i decided to teach the book to my class. this was a particularly

wonderful class. i adored my students and they were wonderful readers. and i thought, these are, you know, 20-year-olds, 21, 22, they're incredibly smart and well-read and good readers, and i wanted to see how they responded to the diary after all of these years, and it was quite wonderful really because they said, when carrying the diary around on campus some of the other students thought that it was -- they were saying to them, didn't you read this in the eighth grade? you know, and they thought it was like some sort of ironic gesture, they had been carrying around grade school lunch box as an attache case. but in fact, the kids' response was so beautiful and so moving and so direct, and i was so moved by the fact that -- that their response was so emotional all of these years later, that i essentially transcribed that class. i tape recorded it. i had a sense it was going to be good and just wrote down a transcription as the last chapter. i'll read you little seconds

from the book, just so you'll get an idea of what the tone of the book is like and explain more and answer questions. so this is from -- it's from the introduction, and it will go on in some length. one thing i just wanted to read you -- i can't help reading you this, though it's -- well i'll read you this. because one of the things that i encountered was how much resistance there's been to taking anne frank seriously, taking her seriously as a writer. it beganartly because she was a 15-year-old girl that somehow the idea of a 15-year-old girl who was a literary genius has been hard for people to take. so i'll read you two paragraphs. the fact remains that anne frank has only rarely been given her due as a writer. with few exceptions her diary has still never been taken

seriously as literature because it's a diary or more likely because its author was a girl. her book has been discussed as eyewitness testimony, as a war document, as a holocaust narrative or not, as a book written during the time of war, that is tangentially about the war and a springboard for conversations about racism and intolerance. but it is hardly ever been viewed as a work of art. harold bloom tells us why. quote, a child's diary even when she was so natural a writer rarely could sustain literary criticism. since this diary's emblematic of hundreds of thousands of murdered children, criticism is irrelevant. i, myself, have no qualifications except as a literary critic, one cannot write about anne frank's drier as if shakespeare or phillip roth is the subject. i mean when i read this i thought, you try this, harold, you try and write this as naturally and beautifully as anne frank.

okay. so this is the part that actually gets into what i was talking about. i always believed that anne frank's diary to be a printed version lightly edited by her father of the book with the check cloth cover that she received on her 13th birthday in june 1942. and that she began to write it in shortly before she and her family went into hiding. that was what i assumed especially after i, like the rest of anne's early readers, had been reassured by the brief ep log to early editions of the book in which we were informed that, quote, apart from a very few passages of little interest to the reader the original text had been printed. i knew there had been controversies about the missing pages out of frank admitted in the process of shaping the diary, more recently i recalled more withheld pages surfaced passages in which anne speculated about the disappointment in her parents' marriage. but i thought that these questions had been answered in most of the restored in 1995 publication of the definitive edition edited by miriam

pressler. as i soon learned anne filled the famous checked diary by the end of 1942. the entries in the red gray, tan cloth covered book span the period june 12, 42 until december 5th of that year. then the year that is a year of the original diary is missing. the diary resumes in an exercise book with black covers which the dutch helpers brought her, begun december 1943, this continuation runs until april 1944. a third exercise book begins in april 1944, the final entry was written these days before its writer's arrest august 4th. starting in the spring of 1944, anne went back and rewrote her diary from the beginning. these revisions would cover 324 loose sheets of colored paper, fill in the one-year gap between the check diary and the blank first black exercise book. she continued to update the

diary as she rewrote earlier pages. anne wanted her book to be noticed, to be read and spent her last months of freedom attempting to make sure that her wish might someday be granted. well, what had happened in between, on march 29, 1944, the family, of course, as you all know, had a contraband radio on which they listened to broadcasts from many of them from the dutch government in exile which was in great britain. and on that night they heard a broadcast from the exile dutch minister of culture who said that ordinary dutch citizens should save their letters, diaries, documents because, after the war, the dutch people and the world would want to know what the dutch endured and suffered during the war. as anne says every everyone made a rush at my diary because the eight people living in the secret annex were aware of the diary they knew she was writing about them, on several occasions they asked her if they could

read the diary. she would say a little bit, not too much. so but they knew that this was exactly what the dutch minister was talking about. so to go on a little further, in may she wrote she wished to become a journalist and famous author, only now she had a sense of the book that might make her reputation. whether leanings towards greatness insanity will materialize remain to be seen but i have the subjects in my mind. in any case, i want to publish a book after the war. that means the house behind the secret annex. whether i shall succeed or not i cannot say but my diary will be a great help. the most important result of this new sense of vocation was that anne began to refine and polish her diary in a form she hoped would might appear. returning to the earliest pages anne cut, clarified, expanded her original entries and added new ones which in some cases she predated, sometimes by years.

thus, the book is not strictly speaking what we think of as a diary. a journal in which events recorded as they occurred day by day but a memoir in the form of diary entries. so another when she went back and changed things there's some famous entries, for example, that entry dated june 20, 1942, in which she decides to call her diary kitty, who will be interested in the unbosomings of a 13-year-old girl. in fact, that wasn't written in june 1942, it was written after march 1944, because she had gone back. and in fact, you know, one of the things i began to think about as i was writing was that, if anybody had taken her seriously as a writer, if anybody had taken her dearry seriously, they would have thought the difference between a 13-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl is immense a difference between a 13-year-old

girl -- 13-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy is huge. and yet, even though we can watch her mature and grow up and grow more reflective and meditative as the diary progresses the fact is the tone of the diary stays prety much the same from the beginning to the end. but if you look at original documents, the original diary, the first version of the diary, the very early parts, are written in this very childish script, printing. you know practically little girl's writing, the kind that has the circles over the is, you know what i -- by the end she's writing in cursive in this fluid cursive and writing 11 pages a day, which is -- you know if any of you have tried to right 11 pages a day is huge. rewriting and keeping the diary up to date. so that huge difference between those two periods was immense and yet again, no one seemed to notice how that happened. in fact, you know, i'm going to

skip -- i want to read you as an illustration two examples of the revisions. let me just say that in 1986, and this was partly in response to the charges of the holocaust deniers who were saying, saying things like, well, there's some markings on the diary in ballpoint pen and there were no ballpoint pens in 1944, so obviously this diary was a forgery. the dutch institute for war documentation hired a group of forensic experts to go and look at diary and see, you know, exactly what had happened. what they established was that it was all written by anne frank, it was all in her handwriting. the tiny little bit of ballpoint pen were numbererings of pages probably done by otto frank, but that was all about. and they also proved that the handwriting had followed trajectory that one would expect

a little girl's hand write, the same little girl's hand writing to follow after two years. and that all of it was written by anne frank, that every word was written by anne herself. but what also happened in the course of this investigation was that they decided to publish anne's original version of the diary, which is known as the a-version, her revisions of the direry, the b-version, and the version thatler father made when he came back after the war by combining the a and b version. he restored some things, he left out some other things. i have to say, and i can talk about this later, i think he did a marvelous job of editing. poor otto frank as been reviled for this and that in censoring and this. but he did an extraordinary job you can read them. push lived, it's called the critical edition of the diary since the revised critical edition. it's not as if i made this discovery. this has been printed, printed all three versions in dutch in

1986 and in english in 1989. so it's been around for a while. but what i have to tell you is that it's quite difficult and maddening to read those three versions because it's an 800-page book, and the three versions are printed in parallel bands going across the page. so to read the a version you have to read them like this, turning the pages like that and the b versions and there are pages left out and sections are added in later so you can't figure out. so it's really -- it took me months and i have to tell you that it was kind of maddening. so i think that the reason that no one really has sat down and compared all of the versions is because it's really quite difficult to do. so i thought i would read you, so you get a sense of what i'm talking about, two different sections, one from the unrevised version, and one from the revised version so you can see how anne changed it. okay. so this is from the so-called --

you understand, this is so-called a version, unrevised, original draft, written at the time. in the first version, anne reports what she has heard and read about the deterioration of civil society because the dutch helpers were coming into the annex, telling them what was go on outside. more than four years into the nazi occupation dutch are he enduring hardship of allied bombings. the quote from the original version, the houses shake from the bombs, how many epidemics there are such as dip here toia, scarlet fever, et cetera, what the people eat, how they line up for vegetables and other things it's almost indescribable. the doctors here under incredible pressure. if they turn their backs on their cars for a moment, they're stolen from the streets. in the hospitals there is no room for the many infectious cases, medicines prescribed over the telephone. above all, the countless

burglaries and thefts are beyond belief. you may wonder whether the dutch have suddenly turned into a nation of thieves. little children of 8 and 11 years break the windows of people's homes and steal whatever they can lay their hands on. you can't leave your home unoccupied for in the five minutes you're away, your things are gone, too. it's good. there's no doubt, it's really good. but let me point out, there are things that writers are told not to do. for example, words like incredible, indescribable, beyond belief, you know, they're good, but here's the second version. how the houses trembled like wisps of grass in the wind and who knows how many epidemics now rage. people have to line up for vegetables and all kinds of other things, doctors are unable to visit the sick because if they turn their backs on their cars for a moment, they are stolen. burglaries and thefts abound, so much so that you wonder what has taken over the dutch for them

suddenly to have become such thieves. little children of 8 and 11 years break the windows of people's homes and steal whatever they can lay their hands on. no one dares to leave his house unoccupied for five minutes because if you go, your things go, too. so you can hear the difference. i'll sum it up for you. admittedly there's a bit of writing, explosions may have shaken holland, diz t did the h shake in the wind. so say epidemics range is stronger than enumerating them, words and phrases writers are advised to avoid, indescribable beyond belief replaced by adjectives. detail of lining of food selected for vague ones. and inability to make house calls without cars being stolen. compare, you can't leave your home unoccupied for in the five minutes you are away your things are gone, too with if you go,

your things go, too. you see the difference. it was extraordinary. so here's an even greater -- two passages that seem more different. and these are passages that anne wrote at the beginning. as most of you probably know, the family knew that they had to go into hiding, the helpers in otto's business were beginning to prepare annex of the warehouse for them to go into hiding. and they assume that they would go around the middle of july. and then early in july, on a sunday afternoon, there was a call up notice for margot frank, the older -- anne's older sister to report for forced labor and deportation out of holland. and when anne wrote the first version, it was only a few days after they had gone into hiding. in other words, the family knew, they had to hurry up, they had to leave, to go into hiding immediately, they had no time to waste.

when anne wrote the first version it was a few days after they had gone into the annex, she was still confused, bewildered, her life overturned, she was 13, she had only a very vague -- i mean she now what had happened but had a kind of -- it was very hard for her to write about it. three years -- two years later, she knew exactly what had happened, she was looking back at it, she was a writer, a stylist. i'll read you two versions and you'll see what i'm talking about. this is the first one. anne's first account of the afternoon reflects the shock she was still feeling two days after her family 'rival in the annex. the early version makes it sound as if anne hears a policeman asking foreher sister. first version, at about 3:00, a policeman arrived with called from the door downstairs miss margot frank. mummy went downstairs and the policeman gave her a card which

said margot frank had to report to s. mommy was upset and went to mr. van pels. i was told daddy had been called up. the door was locked, no one allowed to come into the house anymore. daddy and mummy taken measures and mommy assured me margot would not have to go and we'd be leaving the next day. i started to cry and there was an awful to-do at our house. that's the first version. the second version. at 3:00, someone rang the front doorbell. i was lying lazily reading a book on the veranda in the sunshine so i didn't hear it. later margot appeared in the kitchen door looking very excited. the s.s. sent a cal-up notice for daddy. mommy has gone to see mr. van pell's already of course he won't go mommy's gone to the vps to ask whether we should move into the hiding place tomorrow. we couldn't tack talk anymore ghig daddy, who was visiting in

the old age home. after mummy and mr. van pell's return we were sent out of the room. mr. v.p. wanted to talk to mum mummy alone. she told me the call-up did not concern daddy but her. i began to cry. margot and i began to pack some of our most vital belongs into a school satchel, the first thing i put in was this diary, then hair curlers, handkerchiefs, school books a comb, old letters. i put in the craziest things with the idea we were going into hiding but i'm not sorry, memories mean more than dresses. 5:00, daddy finally arrived and we phone mr. kleiman to ask if he could come around in the evening. it's a huge difference. it's a huge difference. that's the difference two years made. that's the difference between a write somewhere little girl writing in her diary. i have to say when i discovered it i was sos a mazed that i couldn't believe what ias