Two earlier works by Saint-Exupery— the novels Southern Mail and Night Flight—deal with flying and the lives of fliers. Although inferior in quality to later productions, these books introduce themes which the author continued to explore for the rest of his life.

The allegorical The Little Prince, a deceptively simple tale that also features charming illustrations by SaintExupery, is the story of a little prince who leaves his home planet in search of companionship on earth. The most important of Saint-Exupery's "essays," for those readers who wish to understand the philosophy of this man of action and ideas, are Flight to Arras, which tells of the author's experiences as a pilot during World War I; Letter to a Hostage, a wide-ranging piece, about the great days of the past and the difficult times of the war, that contains restatements of many ideas and...