Antoine de Saint Exupery begins the memoir of his time as a pilot by taking the reader into the world of the student pilot taking classes on meteorology in tired old hangars and seeing the pilots returning from harrowing flights across France and Central Europe as death-defying heroes. He and his fellow students would become delivery pilots for Aeropostale flying between Toulouse in southwestern France and Dakar in French West Africa. It is a dangerous flight through clouds below which, according to one of his instructors, lies eternity. Antoine and his fellow students learn that just below the clouds through which they will navigate are mountain ranges and all manner of obstacles on the ground unmarked on any map. (read more)