Wind, Sand, and Stars, Antoine Saint-Exupery, 1939
The author writes with passion, grace, and beauty about his experiences as a postal pilot for France in the early days of aviation. Written only 12 years after Lindbergh’s famous flight, Saint Exupery writes about flying from Toulouse over the Pyrenees to Spain and over the Mediterranean to Saharan Africa as well as his experiences in South America flying over the Andes from Argentina to Chile. The danger and the exaltation of flight are described in detail and with precision despite the author’s oft stated claim that these experiences can’t be put into words. A particularly harrowing near-death crash in the Libyan desert is described at length and very effectively. Saint-Exupery also writes of his in the air and on the ground experience of the Spanish Civil War, a chapter that gives the reader an up close and personal feeling for what it means to put your life on the line. Classic? Not sure, but worth reading after it was mentioned in The Goldfinch as the main character’s favorite book which he read while living in the Las Vegas desert.