Heirs of General Practice

La Place de la Concorde Suisse
Published by Farrar; Straus & Giroux
Paperback: 0-374-51932-3; $12.00US

In admirable disregard for the orthodoxy of public relations, the Swiss Army chose Luc Massy to be the soldier-companion of the American observer John McPhee during various exercises of a "refresher" course among the high Alps. The Swiss Army is a militia, composed of 650,000 people who can be fully mobilized in less than forty-eight hours but generally pursue civilian occupations while their assault rifles repose under beds and in closets at home. The easygoing, irreverent Massy--a master winemaker from the Canton de Vaud--can take the army or leave it alone. On patrol as leader of a Section de Renseignements, he helps McPhee to gather his own information for a book full of wit and deft characterization--actually a portrait of Switzerland within the frame of its militia, and of the thoroughly intertwined relationships between the army and the society it serves.

Reviews

McPhee, in showing us as many aspects of the Swiss Army as their famous knife has blades, has produced one of his best books. --Edmund Fuller, The Wall Street Journal
The Swiss have avoided fighting a war for almost 500 years. To preserve that enviable record of peace, they maintain one of the world's largest armies, on a per capita basis. This paradox ... is the core of McPhee's engaging La Place de la Concorde Suisse. --Jack Schnedler, Chicago Sun-Times
Delightful…What McPhee saw and learned he writes about with his inimitable light touch. --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
"Switzerland does not have an army," says one of John McPhee's informants in La Place de la Concorde Suisse. "Switzerland is an army"…McPhee puts his reader inside Switzerland with elegance and insight. --Jonathan Steinberg, The New York Times Book Review