Saint-Exupery: A Biography

I didn't need to know the background of everyone he talked to, had dinner with or performed card tricks for. But when he was flying again in 1944, it would have been nice to know where the allied front was at each stage of the story.

Saint Exupery visited Paraguay a few times, although it was not his regular route in Aeroposta Argentina/Aeropostale. He regularly flew to the Patagonia. I always wanted to read his biography since I read "The Little Prince" 40 years ago and a had a poster of if in my bedroom. The book is nice, although it has so many details about his personal life that I found irrelevant, but I learned a lot about him.

A knock-out flight w/ Stacy Schiff. Tonio was no saint,but he was about as extraterrestrial as his Little Prince. An amazing and well-documented read. In fact, the notes are about as interesting as the story of the fascinating author's life and that is one reason to read this as a book vs. Kindle, and have the notes at hand. Distracted aviator, magician, lover of women and philosopher. Now the "Little Prince" is even more magical than the first time I read it in French, jamais en anglais. St-exupery is the gardener and the shepherd.

I wanted to like this book, as I have a fascination with this period in history. Unfortunately in order to like the book I needed a much deeper knowledge of all things French than I possess.( I do speak the language.) There was copious name dropping that meant nothing to me. I don't know who Rene Delange, Jacques Chardonne or Emile Raccaud were, so when they, along with hundreds of other people I had never heard of, were frequently introduced into the book with the expectation that I, the reader, knew who they were and why they were important to the story, I simply yawned and lost interest. I think Saint-Ecupery was probably a fascinating man, but if you want to know him, I would suggest that you read one of the books he wrote himslf, and catch a short bio of him from Wikepedia instead of plowing through this exhaustive biography.

Another great biography by Stacy Schiff about the Frenchman who wrote, "The Little Prince". She always gets into the details of her subjects. Saint-Exupery was an intense, complex man who loved flying and writing. He lived in the early daysof flying planes that were dangerous and which led to his death.

I will give context: I have a PhD in History, and have read stacks of historical works both good and bad. This book was torturous to get through, and I have still not finished it. I found it immensely dull. Maybe it's the years since graduate school. Hard to give it a low grade, as the effort and research are pretty clear. But the actual book is a slog and the excitement of a guy who seems fascinating is missing from the pages.

ADVENTURE, HISTORY, LITERATURE, PHILOSPHY, POETRY, LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP: ALL IN ONE BOOK, A REALTREASSURE. I CHOSE IT BECAUSE MY SON IS A PILOT WITH THE USAF WHO SHOWED ALL THE SAME COMMITMENTAND DEVOTION TO FLYING ALL OVER THE WORLD AND BRAGS ABOT FLYING OVER EVERY OCEAN AS SAINT EXUPERY.I WILL CHOOSE IT FOR MY BOOK CLUB SELECTION.ONE OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS IS ANN MORROW LINDBERG AND TO LEARN THAT THEY WERE FRIENDS WAS A LOVELYREVELATION.

Never really got the feeling that I got to know St Ex when reading this bio. The constant use of French words and phrases is overbearing. I don't know what they mean and don't want to take the time to translate them. Would have liked to see more emphasis on his aviation exploits and how his flying career paralleled the growth of commercial and military aviation in his life time.

It is a high art to write a good biography, it is a skilled story-telling. Having read it we must feel that we know the man (or woman) more intimately. It must not be a chronicle of events or a wide and detailed description of the times and places. This author has certainly lost the balance and made the life of one of my beloved authors boring. Unforgivable!

I know much more about Saint-Exupery now - thanks Stacy! A good read, made me chuckle in places, but heart-gripping too!

Very well written and complete. As one of my favourite authors I read his books in French plus several bios but this biography was the most complete and had many stories about him I hadn’t known.

Es una de las mejores biografías de Saint-Ex que existen. El problema de esta edición es que la letra es demasiado pequeña y por el volumen del libro es un poco incómodo de leer.