Insightful. Read it if you want to understand Switzerland. The connection between leadership the officer corps and in business is fascinating.

La Place De La Concorde Suisse gives an insightful perspective into the lives of the Swiss people beyond the romantic visions of the Swiss Alps and instead focuses on the more practical aspects of Swiss functioning. The book gives incredible statistics surrounding the capacity of the Swiss people to defend themselves against just about any attack by any means. Being neutral means having to defend that neutrality and McPhee highlights just the Swiss people have managed to maintain that neutrality for so long.

Good to retread an old friend before a trip to Switzerland

It had been a while since I’d read any McPhee (who is somehow still alive as of August 2022), but what a pleasure to re-experience his writing style: a keen eye, apt descriptions, perfectly chosen adjectives, engrossing digressions, an unerring sentence rhythm, all adding up to the smoothest and most readable paragraphs in the world. He wrote this look at the unique place that the universal military has in Swiss society in 1984, so it’s a bit out of date, but when reading it’s easy to forget the time gap, since just as much of the page time is spent on the wonders of the Swiss mountains as on the lives of the citizen-soldiers he’s following around or the precise details of all the tricks and traps and contingency plans they’ve layered around the landscape. To be frank I will read him write about nearly anything, but the way he describes this living embodiment of the saying “an armed society is a polite society” will make you think a lot about the many parallels and divergences between Switzerland and other countries like the US, Israel, or other neighboring European countries who don’t quite have their acts together (there’s a lot of France jokes) in the same way. I would love an update.

even if ya ain't innersted in whatever mcphee's writin' about it's still good. ya know what i mean?

and the swiss army really do all carry swiss army knives. and drink wine.

Excellent insight of a time now disappeared.

A really interesting topic but I got just about as much out of a review of the book as I got out of the book itself. Interspersed amongst weakly written prose and a repetitive, unnecessary storyline are some juicy factoids about the Swiss Federation and the lengths it goes to remain neutral. But nothing that a bullet list couldn't have done just as effectively.

Christmas present from my dad. Written in the 1980's about McPhee's rare glimpse at Swiss Army training maneuvers in the Alps and elsewhere. Interesting, but hard to judge: McPhee seems too wide-eyed and sycophantic at some points, and too cynical and flippant at others. Never exactly 'objective,' in any case. Maybe he developed a complicated relationship to the Swiss Army during his time traveling with these guys. Maybe the Swiss Army is complicated. Maybe the Swiss Army put the American Writer as far as possible from anything of consequence on purpose, and the American Writer was both grateful for the access but resented its limits. If nothing else, this book made me look at the Swiss countryside in a whole new way. Apparently there are huge guns and explosives and jets and god knows what else hidden away EVERYWHERE and available for deployment on extremely short notice. With little more than the click of a button, it seems, Switzerland can destroy all of its own bridges in an instant as a defensive measure. I knew about the bomb shelters, but seriously!! Fun to read if you're into this sort of thing. Not a great piece of literature, or particularly trustworthy (my Swiss friends have told me that a LOT has changed in the Army since the 80s either way), but only takes a couple days.

http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/1...

older book, talks about Switzerland. McPhee goes around with members of the compulsory army and talks about Switzerland. Makes you realize why military guys tend to leave Switzerland alone.

Well written and interesting. Probably would have liked it more if I had read it closer to when it was written, but that’s not the author’s fault.

The writing is still good, but now antiquated. One paragraph about women? Really? This was written in the 1980s, not the 1880s.