While North to the Orient won the first National Book Award for general nonfiction in 1935, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic Wind, Sand and Stars carried off the award four years later. Believe it or not, before he wrote his much-beloved children's story The Little Prince, Saint-Exupery was a professional pilot for a French airmail company, braving storms and mountains, Saharan deserts, windswept steppes, and the brutal horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Genuine

—Gregory Crouch