La Place de la Concorde Suisse is about the Swiss army, but, as they say, when you talk about Switzerland, you talk about their defense. Because everyone in Switzerland is in the army, you are talking about their country. An incredibly rich country, and thus, an incredibly paranoid country. Although many people are now looking at the Swiss, and especially their banks, with new eyes following the revelations of Nazi war booty being hid within their anonymous, numbered accounts, McPhee put them in the spotlight a decade earlier here. While his light is not as bright as some of those today, he did discover some interesting bits which had been hid by shadows before, like their placement of explosives (or identification of where to place such) under each bridge into the country, a discussion of the surreptitious bombing they suffered under Allied planes in the war, and the old boys network that links the army and the industry. At the end, you don't necessarily emerge with a message, but rather a portrait of the country.

When I first read this book (and for a long time thereafter), I had no idea who John McPhee was. Although I enjoyed his idiosyncratic and engaging style, it was the subject matter of this brief study that interested me most. I've read a couple of McPhee's other books since, and enjoyed those, too. But this one is my favorite, because it's still the subject, rather than the author, that intrigues me most.

It's been said that Switzerland is not a country with an army, but rather an army with a country. McPhee shows us how the militia-army concept -- the every-citizen-as-soldier idea that has been emulated by Israel, for example -- plays out in the lives of Swiss citizens like Luc Massy, McPhee's host on a series of military training exercises. The exercises are more like camping trips for the soldiers, but McPhee shows that behind the breezy attitudes, national defense is a deadly serious business for the Swiss nation and people.

Switzerland's pastoral countryside may never look quite the same again, once you realize that nearly every bridge has been fitted with explosives, the faster to destroy them in case of invasion. That any snow-capped peak may hide artillery emplacements or entire squadrons of fighter jets. That a silent glacier (like the title Place de la Concorde Suisse) may become a front-line airfield at the first sign of trouble. And that, of course, most every farmhouse contains firearms and men and women trained to use them.

Since this book was first published in 1983, there has been a spate of books about the Swiss in World War Two. Coming as it did before that storm, 'La Place de la Concorde Suisse' is a useful way to get a feeling for the Swiss militia system, uncolored (pro or con) by the strong feelings that arose a decade or so later. I recommend this book to anyone interested in a look at Switzerland's unique national defense system in practice.

This is the first book I've read by Mr. McPhee, and I really enjoyed it. The author started out as a journalist and a lot of his pieces originally appeared in "The New Yorker." This background is apparent in the way he writes. He picks an unusual topic, or at least he looks at something from an unusual angle, and he is very economic with his words. This is not a criticism. You don't feel that you are being "shortchanged." Being linquistically economic allows Mr. McPhee to cram an awful lot of interesting information into a short book, in this case just 150 pages. We learn a lot about the workings of the Swiss Army and how it permeates the entire society. We get insight into the Swiss mentality and their philosophy of "neutrality." We also get a little history.....both concerning WWII and going back further, back to the days of the Swiss mercenaries. The famous Swiss precision even comes into play in the construction of bomb shelters: "....the Swiss started building one-bar (i.e.-being able to withstand a certain amount of pressure caused by an explosion) shelters to protect the extremely high percentage of the population that might survive explosions but without the shelter would be destroyed like the citizens of Hamburg and Dresden. Swiss calculations showed that something as thick as, say, a ten-bar shelter would be of negligible extra value, for the increased area of protection would be slight rather than proportional; for underground hospitals and command posts, three-bar construction was chosen." And even though Mr. McPhee is never wasteful with words, this doesn't stop him from occasionally inserting his dry sense of humor. Regarding the Swiss propensity for planning for all contingencies, and not being caught with their pants down, the author writes: "It would be very un-Swiss to wake up tomorrow to yesterday's threat and then attempt to do something about it. If Pearl Harbor had somehow been in Switzerland, a great deal of Japanese aluminum would be scattered all over the Alps." Now that I've dipped my toe in the water, I'm looking forward to reading a lot more by Mr. McPhee!

I rather enjoyed reading this book, but the warning that I give to people is that this book is written in French, not just fancifully titled. The grammer sections are written in French as well as the explaination of the written languages. There are two dictionary sections in this book one for Quenya, the other for Lindarin, where the translations are given in both French and English. The content of the book is well detailed and the words are all presented with a location, to find where they were introduced. As for the fact that the book is written in French, I can say that anyone with a basic grasp of the language can read this book with little trouble. The book is well organized and clearly presented.