'Wind, Sand and Stars' is an aviation adventure classic

I recently finished reading a first-rate adventure book the other day called “Wind, Sand and Stars” by French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and I highly recommend it to anyone in the reading audience with a taste for a good, old-fashioned adventure tale.

A month ago, I decided to read “Wind, Sand and Stars” after I saw it at or near the top of two outstanding recommended reading lists. In January 2003, the editors of Outside magazine put it as No. 1 on their list of “25 (Essential) Books for the Well-Read Explorer.” In the July-August 2001 edition of National Geographic, that publication listed “Wind, Sand and Stars” as No. 3 on its list of “100 Best Adventure Books.”

Having now read the book, I have no doubt as to why it is such a highly regarded adventure book. First published in 1939, “Wind, Sand and Stars,” which was originally written in French, centers on Saint-Exupéry’s experiences while flying government mail planes over the deserts of Northern Africa and the mountains of South America.

Saint-Exupéry gives the reader a good feel for what it was like to fly planes that we would now consider primitive. Without modern navigation systems, pilots like Saint-Exupéry relied on printed maps and their detailed knowledge of geographical features to reach their destinations with the mail. As you might imagine, the book details more than a few incidents in which pilots ran into trouble and crashed, some never to be seen or heard from again.

Saint-Exupéry had one such experience and lived to tell the tale in his book. In what is probably the most gripping part of “Wind, Sand and Stars,” he details a 1935 crash that he and his navigator, Andre Prevoit, experienced in the Sahara Desert in Libya. Off course and unsure of their exact location, they nearly died from dehydration and starvation before they stumbled upon a man on a camel with plenty of water. Saint-Exupéry’s descriptions of the incident are unforgettable and are what make this book so remarkable.

Unfortunately for Saint-Exupéry, his luck eventually ran out a few years after the publication of his book. In July 1944, he disappeared over the Mediterranean while on a reconnaissance mission for the French Air Force, collecting information on German troop movements. He took off from Corsica that evening and never returned.

Fifty-four years later, in 1998, a fisherman found Saint-Exupéry’s ID bracelet east of Riou Island. In 2000, a diver found a plane on the seabed near where the bracelet was found and four years later, the French Underwater Archaeology Department confirmed that the plane was Saint-Exupéry’s. The cause of Saint-Exupéry’s crash remains unknown, but the Germans may have shot him down.

I thoroughly enjoyed “Wind, Sand and Stars” and would highly recommend it to anyone in the reading audience with a taste for adventure, survival, flying, historic aircraft and aviation history.

In addition to “Wind, Sand and Stars,” Saint-Exupéry wrote a number of other published books. His complete bibliography is as follows:

- “L'Aviateur” (1926)
- “Southern Mail” (1929)
- “Night Flight” (1931)
- “Wind, Sand and Stars” (1939)
- “Flight to Arras” (1942)
- “Letter to a Hostage” (1943)
- “The Little Prince” (1943)
- “The Wisdom of the Sands” (1948)
- “Lettres de jeunesse” (1953)
- “Carnets” (1953)
- “Lettres à sa mère” (1955),
- “Wartime Writings, 1939-1944” (1982)
- “Manon, danseuse” (2007)
- “Lettres à l'inconnue” (2008)

In the end, how many of you have had a chance to read “Wind, Sand and Stars” or any of Saint-Exupéry’s other books? What did you think about them? Which did you like or dislike? Which would you recommend and why? Let us know in the comments section below.