A wonderufl companion for Anne Morrow Lindbergh's 5-book collection of Diaries & Letters. A great introduction to Mrs. Lindbergh's work. :-)

Ms. Dickson has thoughtfully put together a collection of inspirational quotes by Mrs. Lindbergh and elaborated further giving new insight and relevance for today's reader.

I couldn't put this book down! A must for ANY fan of Anne Morrow Lindbergh!

I am anxiously awaitng Ms. Dickson's webiste dedicated to Mrs. Lindbergh's legacy.

Ms. Dickson has taken the already inspirational writings of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and made them more meaningful. Through biographical information about Mrs. Lindbergh and her own personal experiences, Ms. Dickson gives them new insight and a contemporary relevance. Anyone already familiar with Mrs. Lindbergh's writings will find this book a welcome addition to their library. For anyone unfamiliar with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, this is a delightful and inspirational introduction. I highly recommend Gifts of the Spirit as a source of spiritual inspiration.

This is a wonderful book wherein the reflections are intelligent and meaningful for any reader. It is one that you can come back to again and again and find something you may have missed in your first reading. I loved it and could not put it down! It's a great addition to anyone's book collection.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's own description of her life, and that of her husband Charles Augustus, is as great a love story as has ever been told... ...and "North to the Orient" but a mere chapter!

They seemed destined to be at each other's side, living tales such as this.

Anne describes best her attempt to chronicle this aerial and literary journey for her reader:

"I have not written a technical account of a survey flight on the great circle route from New York to Tokyo. I do not know enough to write one, and if I did, the time for doing so would be past. Aviation moves a long way in four years. No geographical knowledge can be gained from reading my story. We constructed no maps or charts, and I have not even kept a scientific record of all the territory passed. It is not in any sense a guidebook. Our stops were so short and hurried that only a superficial picture remains. Nor is each point on our route portrayed, but only those which seem to warrant description for the vividness of impression."

She adds pointedly that, "It was not that we arrived in Baker Lake on August third by plane, but that three hours of flying had brought us from the modern port of Churchill to a place where no white woman had ever been before...", concluding that:

"One has only to see the chasm between accessibility and isolation--narrow, so one could reach across, but deep as time--to appreciate what can bridge it."

In "North to the Orient", we gain the opportunity to see air travel pioneered "first person"--through the eyes of a woman--yes:

...riding along...

...but not as baggage or ballast, but rather, as a working participant in an important expedition.

...one who crews not only a primitive, tandem-cockpit aircraft of wood and fabric, but also operates its radio of tubes and coils where transmissions are made via a Morse Code key.

...and one who also flies this wooden wonder into the unknown, as her companion silently rests--trusting, and not fearing--while she takes him to places he too, has never known.

I think that is where the beauty lies--not in the journey or the adventure itself--but how she somehow manages to remain side-by-side with her companion in life; how he responds and thrives just by being in her eyes; and how she is needed.

How no one dares question this soulfully-dependant relationship between the two!

Rather, all the world endeavors in its attempt to understand these two lovers and adventurers...

...and in understanding her, in particular.

One marvels at her words from the confines of the cockpit, as they embark from North Haven on the first leg of their dangerous journey, leaving friends, family, and even their baby behind, on this remarkable, selfless quest:

"The day was hard and clear and bright, like the light slanting off a white farmhouse. The island falling away under us as we rose in the air lay still and perfect, cut out in starched clarity against a dark sea. I had the keenest satisfaction in embracing it all with my eye. It was mine as though I held it, an apple in my hand. All the various parts of it were mine at the same moment; the crowd on the pier, the little rocking boat in the harbor where my family waved, the white farmhouse on the point where my baby was. What a joy to hold them all in my eyes at once, as one tries, saying good-by to a person, to possess all of them in one look."

She, this tiny Columbus, venturing out toward the excitement of the unknown, and yet--stopping for just a moment to glance back, longing for one more memory of the present day, before advancing toward the night.

On this day--and on this journey--no longer were mankind's accomplishments to be measured by the acts of hundred-man crews in vessels of wood and sail, to be led by a single commander.

Nor would an "Eagle" venture forward in a small, frail craft, alone.

For now a woman was unconfined...untethered...rendered equal.

On this day, a husband-and-wife team would dare brave the worst of nature's elements--fragile in the moment--as they were but two souls alone in uncharted skies, living both a love and an adventure...ethereal.

Thus, here is where Anne's story truly begins:

"Our route was new; the air untraveled; the conditions unknown; the stories mythical; the maps, pale, pink, and indefinite, except for a few names, far to the east of our course, to show that someone before us pointed his ship, also, 'North to the Orient'."

And as Anne re-lives this modern-day "Odyssey", descriptive images follow, taking us on a journey not so much involving destinations, but rather, a journey of adventure; a journey of rare natural and human gifts that she came to experience, and of an even rarer selection of people they met along the way.

Thus, "North to the Orient" becomes a reiteration of "life lived at its fullest"...

...an awakening for those who read this story, and no doubt...

...a hope within Anne that--by having written this masterpiece chapter in the love story of her life--she will inspire others to go forth!

"North to the Orient", along with all the writings of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, come with the highest recommendations of this reviewer.

I consider all her works to be a "must-reading" for men in particular, if one should ever hope to comprehend the true beauty that exists within women...

...those who, like Anne, possess their own sense of liberty, and who follow their own paths of maturity to womanhood, while rejoicing in the adventure that is the human experience.

Three years after her marriage to Charles Lindbergh, Anne Morrow Lindbergh left her infant son with her mother and a nanny in North Haven, Maine, strapped herself into the open cockpit of a Sirius floatplane, and flew with her husband to the Orient, following the Northwest Passage through arctic Canada and Alaska that her husband was surveying for the airlines. Her literate, supremely controlled prose is remarkable quite beyond the adventure itself. A year after her return, Anne Morrow faced the horror of her child's kidnapping and its aftermath and quite understandably fell into a prolonged depression. She wrote "North to the Orient" partly to rescue herself from the isolation and despair of those circumstances. The memoir went on to win the National Book Award and launch a celebrated career. You will not believe how gracefully she writes, what suspense she contains in her tight chapters. Finishing it, Anne Morrow Lindbergh not only contributed a literary adventure tale on a par with Wilfred Thesiger's "Arabian Sands." The writing of the book itself was a courageous act. This is one of the great neglected works of American nonfiction.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's own description of her life, and that of her husband Charles Augustus, is as great a love story as has ever been told...

...and "North to the Orient" but a mere chapter!

They seemed destined to be at each other's side, living tales such as this.

Anne describes best her attempt to chronicle this aerial and literary journey for her reader:

"I have not written a technical account of a survey flight on the great circle route from New York to Tokyo. I do not know enough to write one, and if I did, the time for doing so would be past. Aviation moves a long way in four years. No geographical knowledge can be gained from reading my story. We constructed no maps or charts, and I have not even kept a scientific record of all the territory passed. It is not in any sense a guidebook. Our stops were so short and hurried that only a superficial picture remains. Nor is each point on our route portrayed, but only those which seem to warrant description for the vividness of impression."

She adds pointedly that, "It was not that we arrived in Baker Lake on August third by plane, but that three hours of flying had brought us from the modern port of Churchill to a place where no white woman had ever been before...", concluding that:

"One has only to see the chasm between accessibility and isolation--narrow, so one could reach across, but deep as time--to appreciate what can bridge it."

In "North to the Orient", we gain the opportunity to see air travel pioneered "first person"--through the eyes of a woman--yes:

...riding along...

...but not as baggage or ballast, but rather, as a working participant in an important expedition.

...one who crews not only a primitive, tandem-cockpit aircraft of wood and fabric, but also operates its radio of tubes and coils where transmissions are made via a Morse Code key.

...and one who also flies this wooden wonder into the unknown, as her companion silently rests--trusting, and not fearing--while she takes him to places he too, has never known.

I think that is where the beauty lies--not in the journey or the adventure itself--but how she somehow manages to remain side-by-side with her companion in life; how he responds and thrives just by being in her eyes; and how she is needed.

How no one dares question this soulfully-dependant relationship between the two!

Rather, all the world endeavors in its attempt to understand these two lovers and adventurers...

...and in understanding her, in particular.

One marvels at her words from the confines of the cockpit, as they embark from North Haven on the first leg of their dangerous journey, leaving friends, family, and even their baby behind, on this remarkable, selfless quest:

"The day was hard and clear and bright, like the light slanting off a white farmhouse. The island falling away under us as we rose in the air lay still and perfect, cut out in starched clarity against a dark sea. I had the keenest satisfaction in embracing it all with my eye. It was mine as though I held it, an apple in my hand. All the various parts of it were mine at the same moment; the crowd on the pier, the little rocking boat in the harbor where my family waved, the white farmhouse on the point where my baby was. What a joy to hold them all in my eyes at once, as one tries, saying good-by to a person, to possess all of them in one look."

She, this tiny Columbus, venturing out toward the excitement of the unknown, and yet--stopping for just a moment to glance back, longing for one more memory of the present day, before advancing toward the night.

On this day--and on this journey--no longer were mankind's accomplishments to be measured by the acts of hundred-man crews in vessels of wood and sail, to be led by a single commander.

Nor would an "Eagle" venture forward in a small, frail craft, alone.

For now a woman was unconfined...untethered...rendered equal.

On this day, a husband-and-wife team would dare brave the worst of nature's elements--fragile in the moment--as they were but two souls alone in uncharted skies, living both a love and an adventure...ethereal.

Thus, here is where Anne's story truly begins:

"Our route was new; the air untraveled; the conditions unknown; the stories mythical; the maps, pale, pink, and indefinite, except for a few names, far to the east of our course, to show that someone before us pointed his ship, also, 'North to the Orient'."

And as Anne re-lives this modern-day "Odyssey", descriptive images follow, taking us on a journey not so much involving destinations, but rather, a journey of adventure; a journey of rare natural and human gifts that she came to experience, and of an even rarer selection of people they met along the way.

Thus, "North to the Orient" becomes a reiteration of "life lived at its fullest"...

...an awakening for those who read this story, and no doubt...

...a hope within Anne that--by having written this masterpiece chapter in the love story of her life--she will inspire others to go forth!

"North to the Orient", along with all the writings of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, come with the highest recommendations of this reviewer.

I consider all her works to be a "must-reading" for men in particular, if one should ever hope to comprehend the true beauty that exists within women...

...those who, like Anne, possess their own sense of liberty, and who follow their own paths of maturity to womanhood, while rejoicing in the adventure that is the human experience.

I have suffered three miscarriages/stillbirths. I have been given lots of things to read, etc. But this book helped me like no other (besides the Bible) to work through my grief and recover. I am so surprised and saddened that this book is out of print. I give this book to anyone I come across who has experienced miscarriage or stillbirth.

I work with grieving parents who lose children via miscarriage, stillbirth, ectopic pregnancy, or early infant loss. I am constantly on the lookout for information that is practical, easy to understand, and compassionate. Silent Cradle is the best of the best, and I frequently recommend it as a "must have." The journaling exercises are invaluable to those navigating their way through the turbulent waters of grief.

I lost my precious little boy exactly a month ago today. Silent Cradle was sent to me by a friend, and it has been such a great help. It is written by someone who's been there, and it was such a relief to know that everything that I have felt, and am still feeling, is normal and has been felt by others. This book has given me such comfort, just to know that I am not alone in my grief, and that there is hope even in the face of such devastating heartbreak.

This book is AMAZINGLY entertaining. The facts they choose to enlighten you with are both mind boggeling and silly. An easy to read and understand book for children from 8 to 108.

This book is AMAZINGLY entertaining. The facts they choose to enlighten you with are both mind boggeling and silly. An easy to read and understand book for children from 8 to 108.

Xeriscape doesn't mean ugly. This book will help you find plants that are pretty and that won't take up a lot of water. IT's a great book.

This is our reference book for when we are adding something to our yard. We have a full acre that we are working on (slowly!) and this book has helped us every step of the way.

The color pictures make it easy to see exactly what a plant looks like. The color pictures also help when you are trying to find the name of the tree in some yard that you thought was pretty. The information it has on each plant is very useful- it gives you the area it will grow best in (example: Albuquerque or statewide in the shade or statewide up to 800 feet elevation). The other thing that makes this book a good buy is the plant list for different areas. For example, there is a plant list for Gallup/Grants area. These lists give you trees, grasses, shrubs, flowers and more that will grow well in your area.

This is the best resource out there if you live in New Mexico and want to have a lovely landscaped area.

Keeping plants alive in New Mexico is very difficult. If you're thinking of buying this book you already know this. If you do buy it you'll find out how to solve all of your yard and garden problems. This book tells you everything you need to know to successfully surround your home with attractive plants instead of the tiresome and difficult to maintain bluegrass lawn or gravel pit one sees so often in New Mexico.

Most importantly, the book lists plants suitable for every inhabited part of New Mexico. If you've learned to garden in Gallup but want to know what to plant in Deming or Santa Fe, this book is for you.

The plant lists and photographs make this book an essential money and water saving gardening tool for the New Mexico gardener. Buy it for yourself and give a copy to to your new neighbors!

Anne Morrow Lindbergh looked to the sky long before she met Charles Augustus Lindbergh.

Cloudscapes as pastel vistas; marvelling at the wings of a gull in flight; nights lying in bed, looking straight up through a tree to the celestial panorama overhead.

A young girl's vision of her future?

In "Bring Me A Unicorn, the Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922 - 1928", we get to meet the joyful, sweet adolescent, and watch her grow into the young, mature woman, she quickly becomes.

One marvels in seeing her through her own eyes...

...eyes that are discerning: artful, considerate, contemplative, and forever searching.

Eyes that are always examining her "new" and hidden self, for some inner truth.

She reflects upon her "arrival," lacking confidence at first, before finding herself expressed within the petals of lavender flowers:

"I kept looking at the flowers in a vase near me: lavender sweet peas, fragile winged and yet so still, so perfectly poised, apart, and complete. They are self-sufficient, a world in themselves, a whole--perfect. Is that then, perfection? Is what those sweet peas had what I have, occasionally in moments like that? But flowers always have it--poise, completion, fulfillment, perfection; I only occasionally, like that moment. For that moment I and the sweet peas had an understanding."

Daughter of Dwight Morrow, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Anne was living in an upper-class world of regal elegance, and experiencing that world in style. Anne describes a dinner on board J.P. Morgan's steamer "Corsair", with the great man himself greeting her and the Morrow family at the ship's entrance.

"The joy of being there almost invisible in this sparkling world, able to watch and listen to the most brilliant, charming men in the world, and a sense of the utmost fairy-tale luxury--everything done in exciting, magnificant style, so much grander than a party of young people."

Anne then travels to Mexico City, where her father serves as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. On the eve of destiny, she ascends a staircase and turns toward the receiving line that awaits her and her family, where she sees "him" for the first time:

"I saw standing against the great stone pillar--on more red plush--a tall, slim boy in evening dress--so much slimmer, so much taller, so much more poised than I expected. A very refined face, not at all like those grinning 'Lindy' pictures--a firm mouth, clear, straight blue eyes, fair hair, and nice color. Then I went down the line very confused and overwhelmed by it all. He did not smile--just bowed and shook hands."

Awkwardness sets in, as the mature young woman disappears, and the young waif returns anew, seeking one moment, her entrance; the next, her exit; and thereafter, a direction on a parallel course with his life.

This lanky boy, over whom most fawn in adulation, is a curiousity:

"He is very, very young and was terribly shy--looked straight ahead and talked in short direct sentences which came out abruptly and clipped. You could not meet his sentences: they were statements of fact, presented with such honest directness: not trying to please, just bare simple answers and statements, not trying to help a conversation along. It was amazing--breathtaking. I could not speak. What kind of boy was this?"

This boy--already known as the "Lone Eagle"--was beyond "alone"; he was isolated and trapped.

Charles Lindbergh had withdrawn into himself.

Charles was surrounded by admirers living in the "make-believe" world of the Press, and still, had no one to talk to in his own, real world...

...no one to share with, until Anne arrives compassionately to his rescue:

"We talked of going to Xochimilco. We all wanted to go--would he go? He wanted to, but then he said he was afraid he might 'spoil our day'--a crowd would gather. It was quite pathetic, for he wanted to go. I said, 'I feel as though the nicest thing we could do for you would be to leave you alone.' He smiled so kindly but said, 'No, I'd like very much to go--very much indeed.' We were off!"

When they return, he takes them flying, and for Anne--like her sisters--the experience is as much a revelation as it is a first!

"Let me be conscious of this! Let me be conscious!"

Joy and exhilaration overtake her:

"We were high above fields, and there far, far below, was a small shadow as of a great bird tearing along the neatly marked off fields. It gave me the most tremendous shock to realize for the first time the terrific speed we were going at and that that shadow meant us--us, like a mirror! That 'bird'--it was us."

She watches him as well, observing his movements and features:

"He was so perfectly at home--all his movements mechanical. He sat easily and quietly, not rigidly, but relaxed, yet alert. One hand on the wheel--one hand! He has the most tremendous hands."

Man and machine have made their impression. She bids Charles farewell, believing she will never see him again, then watches as he departs Mexico City in his Ryan Monoplane, the "Spirit of St. Louis".

...though Anne's love for him has already begun:

"The feeling of exultant joy that there is anyone like that in the world. I shall never see him again, and he did not notice me, or would ever, but there is such a person alive, there is such a life, and I am here on this earth, in this age, to know it!"

In the months that followed Charles' famous trans-Atlantic flight, Anne was probably the only person he had met who spoke to him with any sincerity...

...and she had simply offered to leave him alone.

Weeks go by in pages, and they meet again. Her love of his world solidifys the bond between them. Enamored with her, Charles Lindbergh falls for the girl that refers to him as:

"That boy."

I first read this book when I was sixteen and it touched me in ways I could not explain. When I suffered through a tragedy last year Anne Lindbergh's writings helped me survive I can never thank her. But I can encourage you to read this book and experience life through her young but wise eyes

Le Corbusier has a dream for Paris, and it is a really interesting and unusual one. He creates a model for the cities, and his model has been living for almost a century. Although, you may reject to see it built, put aside living in it, it is a complete (well, almost complete) model. In this book, Le Corbusier presents his model city in detail from streets to building codes. He not only talks about the physical structure, but also the life style it would create. The mass of the city scares you, but you admire how he defends his vision, which is strong and bold, just like the book itself.

As an architecture student interested in the "art" of city planning, I found this book fascinating! Gives Le Corbusier's "radical" views and ideas plenty of substantive support. It is not only a book of design theory, but a book of urban history. Even if you're not too fond of Corbusier's work, this is a must-read for anyone interested in architecture!

this book has made me stop wasting my time with secondary new things and try to focus onthe top books. i thank rexroth for getting me to read f m ford's "some do not..." , a really great novel. his remarks on homer are great,and his comments make wonderful reading.

Rexroth was "the father of the beatniks" and steeped in a humane understanding of the classics. Rexroth's book discusses sixty volumes, such as the Illiad & Odyssey, Beowolf, Njal's Saga, Job, Mahabarata, Kalevala, Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Plato, Livy, and so on, through Mark Twain and Chekhov. A second volume contains similar sweep across different authors/works. As Rexroth says, these classic texts from around the world are "basic document in the history of the imagination".

A review of Rexroth's book in the Villlage Voice, written three decades ago, says that "The talk is expansive, linking the archaic and the immediate, finding in Euripides 'the first psychedlic system of values, a middle-class substitute for mystical vision,' or noting how in Caesar's _Gallic War_ 'the simple nouns and verbs carom off each other like billiard balls... The rapid and complex movement of simple elements deploys on the page exactly like the battle it describes.'...The books he loved he saw as emanations of living feeling, line of communication miraculously kept open."

Or, to quote from Rexroth himself: "Life may not be optimistic, but it certainly is comic, and the greatest literature present man wearing the two conventional masks; the grinning and the weeping faces that decorate theatre prosceniums. What is the face behind the mask? Just a human face -- yours or mine. That is the irony of it all -- the irony that distinguishes great literature -- it is all so ordinary."

Without denigrating the non-Western tradition -- in fact, by including many essays about non-Western classics -- and without paying homage via knee jerks, Rexroth succeeds brilliantly.

I think this book is the best book I ever read. I hope someday it will be published as a New York Times best seller. I hope that who ever reads this will like it as much as I did.

It is the best book I have ever read It is the top on all the books I have also read. I hope my mom will let me get this exiting great book on Amozon. com. You relly sould read this great book. I'm shore it will be tthe top on your list to. Because it showed alot of detail.