EARTH SHINE

by Anne Morrow Lindbergh ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 1969

Two essays--celebrating the December 1968 ""moon"" launching at Cape Kennedy and a visit to East Africa-in which Mrs. Lindbergh's transcendent murmurations appear to ultimate and least effect. Through the years the author's musings upon a divine universality in man and nature have fallen into a familiar and lulling cadence. For example, in her African essay the following on one page: ""a heightened quality of awareness . . . a flood of sights . . . the profound mystery of darkness . . . the mountain . . . newly capped with snow,"" And. so to sleep. However, in the launching essay, Mrs. Lindbergh (accompanied by her husband, who reminisced with the astronauts about his visit to Robert Goddard, rocket pioneer), is very much awake, in extravagant prose somehow not in appropriate to the event. There is an hectic view of the waiting rocket at midnight: ""the mobile launcher . . . is turned; almost seems to lean, With its overhanging crane, above the slightly smaller rocket in a gesture that is half embrace and half release; while the rocket at its side is newborn, naked, silver-bright."" The miracle was that the ""cosmological revolution"" was at last ""given a human face. Human eyes saw, human words came down; human gestures were watched."" Mrs. Lindbergh wondering observations, astronaut-Houston exchanges included here and snatches of poetry seem all of a piece. An emotive recreation, excerpts from which have been published in Life.

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION