"A perfect blend of 'travel writing' and history. O'Shea first showed himself a master of the genre in his 1997 Back to the Front and he continues here in fine style, sharing an idiosyncratic and highly personal tour of the Alps from west to east. He's a perceptive observer in the spirit of Bill Bryson, with dozens of amusing anecdotes and vignettes (see the one on the middle of page 150!). This is a region where stereotypes, from Heidi to the Nazis to The Sound of Music, seem to be, if you will, heightened. He also notes the way the tragic and dramatic life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria runs like a common thread through the history of Switzerland, Bavaria, and Austria. I don't generally like cold and snow, but I enjoyed this book immensely."
Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date 2017-02-21
Section New Hardcover - Nonfiction / Travel Lit / Adventure / All Staff Suggestions / Nonfiction Suggestions
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9780393246858
A thrilling blend of contemporary travelogue and historical narrative about the Alps from “a graceful and passionate writer” (Washington Post). For centuries the Alps have seen the march of armies, the flow of pilgrims and Crusaders, the feats of mountaineers, and the dreams of engineers?and some 14 million people live among their peaks today. In The Alps, Stephen O’Shea takes readers up and down these majestic mountains, battling his own fear of heights to journey through a 500-mile arc across France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia. O’Shea, whose style has been hailed for its “engaging combination of candid first-person travel writing and absorbing historical narrative” (Chicago Sun-Times), whisks readers along more than 2,000 years of Alpine history. As he travels pass-by-pass through the mountains, he tells great stories of those (real and imagined) who have passed before him, from Hannibal to Hitler, Frankenstein’s monster to Sherlock Holmes, Napoleon to Nietzsche, William Tell to James Bond. He explores the circumstances behind Hannibal and his elephants’ famous crossing in 218 BCE; he reveals how the Alps have profoundly influenced culture from Heidi to The Sound of Music; and he visits iconic sites, including the Reichenbach Falls, where Arthur Conan Doyle staged Sherlock Holmes’s death scene with Professor Moriarty; Caporetto, the bloody site of the Italians’ retreat in World War I; and the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s aerie of a vacation home. O’Shea delves into Alpine myths and legends, such as the lopsided legs of the dahu, the fictitious goatlike creature of the mountains, and reveals why the beloved St. Bernard dog is so often depicted with a cask hanging below its neck. Throughout, he immerses himself in the communities he visits, engagingly recounting his adventures with contemporary road trippers, watchmakers, salt miners, cable-car operators, and yodelers. 4 maps
