Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wind, Sand and Stars
Book Review: Enjoy the wonder of unadulterated genius at work.
Summary: 5 Stars
I believe this is the greatest book by one of the best authors of all time. To open a St. Exupery book is to think of the spring sun on a cold, cloudy January day. Where does one go from here? To St. Exupery's soliloquy on finding a meteor in the sands of the Sahara? To his tale of surviving the rigors of the desert? To his description of night over the South Atlantic?It is a question that cannot be answered. One should not even try, but should only linger rhapsodized over each description of even the most mundane things by this irresistable wordsmith. Some people never wrote badly, even once. He was one of them and the world is much poorer for his early departure. At least he left this peerless work about early mail pilots. Adieu, mon cher ami.
Book Review: Poetic Pilot Philosopher
Summary: 5 Stars
St. Exupery's words beg you to drink them like hot tea. His language is as beautiful as the landscape it describes. I loved this book and the warm blanket effect it had on me: soothing and exciting at the same time. It is inspiring and adventurous, calming you in a strange way that makes your heart beat ever faster. A marvelous work of storytelling with dreamy poetic prose. This book will never be pushed out of the ruling position of its genre.Book Review: Wind, Sand and Stars
Summary: 5 Stars
I lulled over Wind Sand and Stars for a long time, savoring each word to the last drop! Intensely reflective, philosophical and insightful, I felt like I was right in the desert with Saint Exupery, vicariously reaching for that experience of living away from most frivolities of modern civilization in search of that true place and relationship with the sands, the seas, space ... The flight adventures are marvelously described with just enough detail to inform the nonpilots without becoming tedious. The experiences in solitude of the Sahara are vividly portrayed - you definitely can feel you are a part of the landscape. In addition to St-Ex's hallmarked "idealism" and childlike perspective, his thoughts on the importance of duty are equally compelling. St-Ex did seem to lecture a bit excessively close to the end as far as his rampant musings on war and man and such, but all in all this was a fabulous read.Book Review: What an experience!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
It's probably all been said before...! This is one of my favorite companion books, for the lessons of (sparce, but vital) comradery and (immense) courage are told in such a humbly personable way, I've felt many times like the Antoine was right here, speaking to me. It's incredible how a single cell of humanity in these desolate places becomes so blinding we can see hardly anything else... Such amazing times, these were!Book Review: read this book!
Summary: 5 Stars
What is truely remarkable about this book are two things :(a) It provides a vision for mankind which reconciles our need for progress with our (recent!) roots of self sufficiency, community and coexistence with nature. It is a vision desperately in need of voice in these doomed decades of the twighlight of the industrial age. The vision is one of courage to challenge the limits of our secure but meaningless lives and our tamed ambitions. The strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity, when we DARE to challenge ourselves to truely live our lives.
Two passages stick out in my mind to illustrate this underlying theme. In the introduction to the text, Exupery recalls flying over the empty landscape of Argentina; each of the lights of the houses, he recalls, clung to the fragile earth, is a "miracle of consciousness". In the second, he describes his comrades' desperate five day walk to safety after crashing in the wilderness of Patagonia. On reaching safety he said, "no animal would have gone through what I have have been through" (paraphrase). A sentence which returned things to their true heirarchy, adds Exupery.
A vision of man's ascendancy of the beast; a challenge to man to not live as caged animal in robot cities.
(b) The other thing, of course, and more important perhaps, is the beauty of the prose. Full of pronouncements and insights (unlike any other book!) it still flows as a story, full of emotion. In particular in the desert scenes, each sentence transports you in time and space and impacts upon your every feeling. For sections of the book, page after page, each and every sentence has a resonance which brings waves euphoria and despair. To drink water, after reading the desert chapters, is to experience the joy of life!