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I remember after high school on a whirlwind trip of Europe stopping at Mount Titleist and seeing on the way up the mountain the fake rock doors to an underground military bunker. I thought at the time the Swiss idea of aggressive neutrality was pretty cool.

The degree to which Swiss society and the Swiss military are congruent, at least back when McPhee wrote this book, was surprising to me. McPhee's distinctive style and his knack for presenting facts in the context of people who feel real and human makes for an easy and entertaining read.

I so wish there was a current, updated version of this one.

John McPhee doe it again. This book does for the Swiss military what Coming Into the Country does for more modern Alaskan pioneers/adventurers.

A 162 page New Yorker article from 1983 about the Swiss Army. "Switzerland doesn't have an army. Switzerland is an army."

Amused.

Hysterical, lighthearted, and beautifully written, but If you're like me you'll feel like a lot of the jokes go over your head because they're over your tax bracket.

This book was the result of a tour John McPhee made of Switzerland back in the day, following a band of Swiss men on their yearly volunteer service in the Swiss Army. It is amazing how much you can learn while being totally entertained by a piece of writing. I find that I often learn new facts from the books I read, whether I'm aware of it or not; the trouble is, with novels, you can never be entirely sure if a presented piece of information is actually true. Not so with nonfiction, and especially when it comes to John McPhee! On a visit to Switzerland a few years ago I asked a Swiss friend of mine if he knew that many of the bridges in his country were rigged to blow up in the event of an invasion. He didn't. But I sure did!

There are many remarkable elements to McPhee's writing. One that I think is under-appreciated is his humor. It is always delivered without drawing attention to itself in a way that makes you wonder if McPhee knows he is being funny (of course, though, he always knows). Take the following passage:

Hentsch belongs to one of the most august and ancient private-banking families in Geneva. On his own, he has become well known for his resourceful development of new accounts. He manages portfolios. He says that he is like a priest, in that he must know his customers well in order to serve them. Less than a week ago, he was in Portland, Maine, buying lobsters. Last year, he bought twenty-five thousand lobsters, importing them through Zurich into Sweden. Of service in the Swiss Army, he says, "It belongs to the passport." And apropos of nothing at all he adds, "We are nice people. Not everyone understands that."

If you didn't crack a smile at that end of that, don't read this book. Watch "Grey's Anatomy" or something.

Hard book to rate because it is so odd, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Would love to read a modern review that touches on what has (or hasn’t) changed in the Swiss army since it was written; I suspect some parts are timeless but others very dated now.

Very boringly written by McPhee, he seems more intent on romanticizing than questioning the Swiss military. Interestingly their 650K army has been reduced to 100K since when the book was written. I’m not sure I got anything out of this, except next time I’m in Switzerland I might look for plastic mountains.

Largely a reportage of McPhee’s embed with a Swiss Army infantry unit. Things done very very well are his descriptions of the men in the units, the mountainous and rural terrain, the urban terrain the Swiss Army plans to defend if they are ever invaded. Also good are the tangents he explores into the history of the Swiss Army’s development of its strategic goals: which is to protect Swiss neutrality by making any potential invader pay an unacceptably high price for invading Switzerland. Very well describes how an infantry squad can contain a Banker, Sommelier, Bricklayer, Farmer, Molecular Biologist and more. Surely a lesson that Americans need to re-learn.

Things not liked: too much focus on the goings on of a squad during maneuvers, not enough of the organization or history of the Swiss Army, not enough of how Swiss citizens feel about their forces (are they proud, regrets that Swiss soldiers aren’t paid more). One example is a officer pointing out that some young in the mid eighties suggested that Switzerland’s grand strategy should be to wage guerrilla warfare, but he correctly pointed out that such warfare is hard on the civilians. A fact that has been adequately demonstrated by Hamas in Gaza in 2023-2024.

Overall a good read for a military book club or any military professional.

This is the most lighthearted of McPhee's ouevre -- perhaps his only book where he is so often going for laughs.

If you are unfamiliar with John McPhee, this might be a great place to start. This is one of his shortest books, and definitely the lightest. His choice to explain the Swiss army by hanging around a group of low-ranking, poorly-performing soldiers turns out to have brilliant, as it gives him ample opportunity to both explain and skewer the institution. That said, he comes across as a clear admirer of the Swiss and their approach to foreign policy, which he describes as the 'porcupine principle' -- roll up and brandish your quills in response to any threat.

I should think many of the details of the book are by now out of date, but it's an immensely enjoyable read.