by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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Product Description
In this inimitable, beloved classic—graceful, lucid and lyrical—Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea. Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life bring new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life. A mother of five, an acclaimed writer and a pioneering aviator, Lindbergh casts an unsentimental eye on the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us: the time-saving gadgets that complicate rather than simplify, the multiple commitments that take us from our families. And by recording her thoughts during a brief escape from everyday demands, she helps readers find a space for contemplation and creativity within their own lives.
With great wisdom and insight Lindbergh describes the shifting shapes of relationships and marriage, presenting a vision of life as it is lived in an enduring and evolving partnership. A groundbreaking, best-selling work when it was originally published in 1955, Gift from the Sea continues to be discovered by new generations of readers. With a new introduction by Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve, this fiftieth-anniversary edition will give those who are revisiting the book and those who are coming upon it for the first time fresh insight into the life of this remarkable woman.
The sea and the beach are elements that have been woven throughout Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s life. She spent her childhood summers with her family on a Maine island. After her marriage to Charles Lindbergh in 1929, she accompanied him on his survey flights around the North Atlantic to launch the first transoceanic airlines. The Lindberghs eventually established a permanent home on the Connecticut coast, where they lived quietly, wrote books and raised their family.
After the children left home for lives of their own, the Lindberghs traveled extensively to Africa and the Pacific for environmental research. For
several years they lived on the island of Maui in Hawaii, where Charles Lindbergh died in 1974.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh spent her final years in her Connecticut home, continuing her writing projects and enjoying visits from her children and grand-children. She died on February 7, 2001, at the age
of ninety-four.
Reeve Lindbergh is the author of many books for both adults and children, including the memoirs Under a Wing and No More Words.
Amazon.com Review
I found a 1955 printing of this book in an old waterfront cabin and was struck by the care with which the previous owner had read it. Eve (the name inscribed inside the front cover and then again above the heading for chapter 3) made pencil marks on nearly every paragraph of the book, underlining a phrase, highlighting many passages with strong vertical marks, scratching out some words that she seems to have found superfluous and even x-ing out whole sections that apparently missed their mark with her altogether. Two rusting paper clips isolate several pages, absent any marking at all. Anne Morrow Lindbergh's lyrical words are still relevant and presage so many of the themes of today's most popular books: simplicity, peaceful solitude, caring for the soul, a woman finding her place in society and life. I heard that the woman who had lived in the cabin had actually passed away some time before. Thank you, Eve, for your gift... from the sea.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Great book for women,s self discovery., 2008-11-03
Great short read. Ahead of its time given it was writtem in 1955. Great book for women to help understand there role in life, not so much for men.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A Joy Forever, 2008-08-08
What more can be said about this lovely collection of thoughts? Even as it celebrates its 50th anniversary, it is as fresh as the day it was penned. This book is a keeper if ever there was one, a volume to be read and re-read and handed down to one's children, which is what I intend to do with the most recent Gift from the Sea that I bought.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A Gift for Your Mom..., 2008-07-08
Listed as a 'summer read' in a local magazine list - I hadn't heard of this book. I picked it up and finished it from one afternoon into the next morning. And -- there was nothing surprising or new to be found here in the book - the pace at which its written and the uncomplicated natural way Lindbergh examines her life and her impressions of life's stages will have me passing this book on to many people in my life.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A Few Shells, 2008-06-23
What timeless wisdom there is in this little book. Although it was written many decades ago, the challenges and issues faced by Anne Morrow Lindbergh are the same ones faced by women in today's crazy, bustling world. In fact, although women in Siberia, Cameroon, or Ceylon might not have her specific set of circumstances, they can still identify with Lindbergh's ponderings about a woman's life, her obligations, her relationships, and her needs. She lived in an upscale suburb of Connecticut and was the mother of five children, and yet there's something in her writing that can touch the souls of women everywhere whether in a grass hut or trailer beside a busy highway
The chapters in Gift from the Sea center on Lindbergh's musings during a two-week vacation at the shore. Leaving husband, children, and house behind, she lives in a bare beach cabin without heat, telephone, plumbing, hot water, rugs, or curtains. She finds simplicity beautiful and longs to take it home to Connecticut when her vacation ends.
Lindbergh takes a shell at a time and describes it in relation to other things in a woman's life. For instance, the moon shell reminds her that quiet time, solitude, contemplation, and "something of one's own" is needed. The double-sunrise represents the pure relationship found in early stages of friendship and marriage, and she reminds the reader that there is no permanent return to an old form of relationship since all are in the process of change. The oyster bed symbolizes the middle years of marriage and family, especially as the home itself grows and expands to accommodate the growing family.
I first read this book when I was a young mother and could readily understand Lindbergh's comment that saints were so rarely married woman because of the distractions inherent in raising children and running a house. "Human relationships with their myriad pulls--woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life." Now in midlife, I can better understand her affinity for all the shells as reminders that each cycle of the wave, the tide, and the relationship is valid.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Hardly touching, 2008-06-19
This book came very highly recommended by two friends who are avid book readers. However I hate to admit that the book did not move me as much as my friends claimed that it moved them. I was more interested about the background references to the author's personal life and how the book came into being. That I would have read voraciously. The book is short but I don't intend to read it again to see what I missed. I believe a book either moves you or it doesn't. This particular book despite other rave reviews did not move me despite my great affinity for the sea and women writers. I wonder if perhaps if the book would have touched me differently if I read it in the beach rather than on a plane which I did.
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