Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit [Abridged] [Audio Cassette]

Richard Bach (Author), Leslie Parrish-Bach (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1994

Fifty years after promising--and forgetting--to come back through time and teach himself what he has learned about life, Richard meets nine-year-old Dickie Bach, who reminds him of the promise.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An extended dialogue between Bach and his inner child comprises the latest book from the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. While hang-gliding one afternoon, Bach is reminded of a promise he made to himself when he was a child: to write a book containing the sum of all he has learned and deliver it to his nine-year-old self, Dickie. But Bach finds that Dickie is angry and hurt at having been locked away for the last 50 years. Slowly a dialogue emerges, as Bach tries to pass on his years of experience and in return relives some buried memories, particularly the events surrounding the death of his brother Bobby. What results is a kind of Richard Bach primer, summing up the author's thoughts on time, love, death and God and laying out a belief system not unlike George Bernard Shaw's idea of the Life Force. Participating in this shared voyage of discovery is Bach's wife, who contributes her own insights and acts as a kind of reality check on her husband. Though the concept here may strike some as Philosophy Lite, the book-thanks in large part to Bach's sincerity-deftly skirts sentimentality and becomes, ultimately, a real and affecting creation.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This is a fictional autobiography by the author of the best-selling Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970). After meeting an angel named Shepherd on a paragliding adventure, Bach is challenged to get to know his inner child. At one point he describes his childhood memories as "burnt monochrome footage of the time from which I had come." This statement is an accurate description of Running from Safety. Bach intermittently weaves stories about "Dickie," his inner child, with tales about paragliding. This is a misguided venture in which the author tries to incorporate mysticism, angels, his inner childhood, and paragliding. The resulting bellyflop does not provide much entertainment. Most collections can pass on this.
Ravonne A. Green, Emmanuel Coll. Lib., Franklin Springs, Ga.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Audio Renaissance; Unabridged edition (September 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559273089
• ISBN-13: 978-1559273084
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,019,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A former USAF pilot, gypsy barnstormer and airplane mechanic, Richard Bach is the author of more than three books.
He has not taken much thought to his page at Amazon, having just discovered today that it exists. He will likely return and fluff up this page a bit. His new website is www.richardbach.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book to Revisit, March 1, 2001

By 

Paul Landen (Kasilof, Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit (Paperback)

When "Running From Saftey" first came out I couldn't read it. I remember thinking that the book just didn't speak to me at all, and I gave up after less than 100 pages. Was I ever wrong!! Recently, I remembered the book and decided to give it another try. I am 39 this year -- youth, aging, who I was, who I will be are very heavy in my "approaching 40" mind. The wisdom, insight, and ideas I gained from this book amazed me. It is nothing short of remarkable. Read it, savor it, learn from it!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars maybe you're right where you were meant to be, September 30, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (MX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit (Hardcover)

Richard Bach is one of my favorite authors and in this book he explores an area i believe must of us wish to do. As we so often wonder what might've happened if we had done things different, usually because we are not happy with the way life is going right now, here we have a way to really understand that everything we've done has made us what we are today. maybe, just maybe we are where we were meant to be...but if we are not sure or happy enough, as long as there's life, there's time to get there.

63 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Richard Bach had no right to write this book., April 14, 2000

By 

Brian Kendig (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit (Paperback)

Richard Bach has written some wonderful books. I highly recommend Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions for the soul-seekers among us, The Bridge Across Forever for the romantics, and his earlier autobiographies for those of us who have always wanted to fly.

But this time he's gone overboard. I've tried a few times to get through Running From Safety, but I've never made it all the way through. In this quasi-autobiographical book, Richard Bach sets up all sorts of straw-man 'learning experiences' to show how he's learning to let go of the complications and the rationalizations of an adult mind and be true to the hopes and dreams he had as a young boy. The message is good enough, but he goes about it heavy-handedly, setting himself up repeatedly then taking himself down with the morals he's trying to get across. The result is that he doesn't portray himself realistically, and he certainly doesn't come across as the same person who the Illusions / Bridge Across Forever / One trilogy set himself up to be. This new Richard Bach is less graceful and more sappy.

But the real problem, the reason why I actively recommend against this book, is that the author's own life invalidates it. The principal message of the book is to stop being a dull, boring, un-fun adult rationalizing away all your hopes, and to remain true to what you once dreamed as a child, right? Well, The Bridge Across Forever beautifully showed Richard Bach's hopes for someday finding his soulmate, his 'other half,' without whom he's just not whole... but recent rumors, confirmed by a story on Bach's web site, are that he has divorced his soulmate because his hobbies and his career were more important to him than she was. It's very hard to accept that the person who would do that is the same person who wrote this book.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't fault the man for making choices in his own life, but I feel that Richard Bach has in recent years gone from being a brave and unusual thinker to becoming a New Age mystic, and in doing so, he's lost touch with at least this reader.