Product Description
Recipient of the Grand Prix of the Académie Française, Wind, Sand and Stars captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying. Translated by Lewis Galantière.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 42 reviews)

Timeless

I first read this book 45 years ago when flying was a dream for the future. Four plus decades and 3,500 hours of flying later the mastery of the author is still there.

Written in an era of open cockpit bi-planes the book captures the challenges of flying small planes in vast dark skies.

Highly recommended.
September 02, 2008

Flying is just the cover theme

Having just finished this book I feel compelled to write a review. This book is about more than flying and the adventures of the French Airmen of that era. This book is a flight into the author's views of self-fulfillment, discovery, and his opinions on humanity, specifically the willingness of certain individuals to sacrifice themselves for a cause. The author relates tales of near misses with disaster and the feelings of redemption and a renewed sense of appreciation for life. There are also times when he feels himself completely isolated from the world below since he is constantly teetering on the brink (naturally, flying was much more dangerous back then)
One theme that is constantly brought up by the author is the value of human relationships and the constant struggle to make them work. The only thing truly valuable we attain in life are hard-earned friendships, especially those that share a common sense of hardship.
Overall this is a very insightful book with a lot of truth. Flying is the cover theme, but the pages and words reveal so much more.

August 07, 2008

"The physical drama cannot touch us until someone points out its spiritual sense."

Like many of his contemporaries, European aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944) was seeking the meaning of life in the post World War I world. He looked for it and often found it outside the bounds of quotidian existence. His job as a pilot for Aeropostale, the French air mail service, offered him a unique perspective as he encountered the elements up close and personal in small planes he guided over vast deserts, oceans and mountains, and through fog, storms and, in a memorable account, a cyclone. His survival depended upon a heightened awareness of nature's elements. His was a life lived large and he knew it; he pities the poor bureaucrat's confined existence; he pities even more the child who with the right "gardener" could become a prince or another Mozart but who is groomed rather to lead a circumscribed life.

His narrative never bogs as he connects the concrete elements of nature with abstract sentiments. He renders his adventures vividly, especially the climatic chapter in which he and his mechanic survive a crash in the Sahara with almost no provisions. A year after that, in 1936, he goes off to Spain and the Civil War to learn why it is that mankind reaches the flash point of war and willingly puts itself in harm's way. That experience and the lessons it divulges comprise the last chapter. Among his often surprising observations is the note on how wild geese flying overhead can stir domestic birds below.

The author speaks in the idiom of a masculine age and a self-assured European culture. The idiom is noticeable but does not diminish the vision or lyricism of the book. I read the 1967 Harvest edition of the book that offered a translation that preserved the authentic voice of the book.

June 19, 2008

Wisdom from an earlier generation

It is not exaggeration to say that the reading of four books--one of them "The Little Prince" by St. Exupery--changed my life. It would also not be an overstatement to say all my reading now is done to try to find another title or two to add to this list. (Maybe, though, the changing of my life is of little consequence. . .it slips away. . .it slips away. Maybe now I read to have another title to suggest to my children. They still, I hope, have much of life left. Let their changing begin.)

So, I suggest the "Wind Sand, and Stars" to them.
St. Exupery writes so convincingly of what the human spirit could achieve:
"To be a (man) is precisely, to be responsible. . .It is to feel, when setting one's stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world."
and so devastatingly about what is has achieved:
". . .war is won by him who rots last--but in the end both rot together."
There is wisdom in this book; wisdom in all his books.

I worry, though, that my suggestion will go unheeded. St. Exupery was younger than both my grandfathers. Yet he writes of a world foreign, maybe unknowable, to me--a world, despite its ugliness and hatred, with nobility and honor. I can't imagine, as St. Exupery relates in one tale, a world where an enemy Arab army--forced into a very temporary, very awkward alliance with French soldiers--appeals to the French for a resupply of ammunition spent in that defense. And the French officer--in gratitude for that temporary support, yet knowing the ammunition would likely be used against his own men--complied!

This past world seems so unreal to me, who reads. How will it seem to my children (and the rest of their generation who foolishly) don't?

So, I suggest this to you this generation and, also, I warn.
June 10, 2008

Adventure, Philosophy, Aviation . . . all of it

A wonderful, wonderful autobiographical work by the French aviation pioneer. Antione de Saint-Exupery was among those first who flew the scheduled air mail runs over the Sahara in the 1920's and 30's. Engine failures, crahses, and falling into the hands of hostile Bedouins was not uncommon. Those stories alone would make for fascinating reading.

Add to that the author's genuine talent as a poet philospher, and this is a unique and great piece of historical literature. Saint-Exupery finds magic and value in everything . . . the lights of his primitive dashbord at night, the world scrolling under him while in flight, the hallucinations while dying of thirst face down in the desert sand. And his observations of people! - the love-hate relationship with the Arabs of the desert, a pair of little princesses living in fantastical (because the author makes it so) house in a remote jungle village, the heroics of Spanish revolutionaries and patriots.

The adventure aspects rival any fiction I have read . . . flying while held stationary in a tremendous offshore windstorm off the South American coast . . . the magic of nightfall while in flight . . . slamming into the Libyan desert floor while flying blind.

As he is wont to do, Saint-Ex frequently treks off into the motivations and worth of mens' efforts, and the human situation in general. But always good stuff, some of it ingenious. Thoughtful, posing many truths and questions.

A wonderful work. I had to read it in English, and doubtlessly something has been lost in the translation from French (transl by Lewis Galantiere). Still, not to be missed.
May 23, 2008

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Night Flight
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Stuart Gilbert

The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Richard Howard

Flight to Arras
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Lewis Galantiere

A Guide for Grown-ups: Essential Wisdom from the Collected Works of Antoine de Saint-Exupery
by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

West with the Night
by Beryl Markham