The Alps: A Human History from Hannibal to Heidi and Beyond

The Alps: A Human History from Hannibal to Heidi and Beyond PDF Author: Stephen O'Shea
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393634191
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
“An entertaining, turbocharged race among the high mountain passes of six alpine countries.” —Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review For centuries the Alps have been witness to the march of armies, the flow of pilgrims and Crusaders, the feats of mountaineers, and the dreams of engineers. In The Alps, Stephen O’Shea ("a graceful and passionate writer"—Washington Post) takes readers up and down these majestic mountains. Journeying through their 500-mile arc across France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia, he explores the reality behind historic events and reveals how the Alps have profoundly influenced culture and society.

The Alps: A Human History from Hannibal to Heidi and Beyond

The Alps: A Human History from Hannibal to Heidi and Beyond PDF Author: Stephen O'Shea
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393634191
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
“An entertaining, turbocharged race among the high mountain passes of six alpine countries.” —Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review For centuries the Alps have been witness to the march of armies, the flow of pilgrims and Crusaders, the feats of mountaineers, and the dreams of engineers. In The Alps, Stephen O’Shea ("a graceful and passionate writer"—Washington Post) takes readers up and down these majestic mountains. Journeying through their 500-mile arc across France, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia, he explores the reality behind historic events and reveals how the Alps have profoundly influenced culture and society.

Slow Train to Switzerland

Slow Train to Switzerland PDF Author: Diccon Bewes
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1857889762
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book Here

Book Description
A travel diary from 1863 inspires author Diccon Bewes to retrace Thomas Cook's historic train trip that revolutionized tourism forever.

Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the Years 1860-69

Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the Years 1860-69 PDF Author: Edward Whymper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Alps
Languages : en
Pages : 574

Get Book Here

Book Description


Schlepping Through the Alps

Schlepping Through the Alps PDF Author: Sam Apple
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307490521
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hans Breuer, Austria’s only wandering shepherd, is also a Yiddish folksinger. He walks the Alps, shepherd’s stick in hand, singing lullabies to his 625 sheep. Sometimes he even gives concerts in historically anti-Semitic towns, showing slides of the flock as he belts out Yiddish ditties. When New York-based writer Sam Apple hears about this one-of-a-kind eccentric, he flies overseas and signs on as a shepherd’s apprentice. For thoroughly urban, slightly neurotic Sam, stumbling along in borrowed boots and burdened with a lot more baggage than his backpack, the task is far from a walk in Central Park. Demonstrating no immediate natural talent for shepherding, he tries to earn the respect of Breuer’s sheep, while keeping a safe distance from the shepherd’s fierce herding dogs. As this strange and hilarious adventure unfolds, the unlikely duo of Sam and Hans meander through a paradise of woods and high meadows toward awkward encounters with Austrians of many stripes. Apple is determined to find out if there are really as many anti-Semites in Austria as he fears and to understand how Hans, who grew up fighting the lingering Nazism in Vienna, became a wandering shepherd. What Apple discovers turns out to be far more fascinating than he had imagined. With this odd and wonderful book, Sam Apple joins the august tradition of Tony Horwitz and Bill Bryson. Schlepping Through the Alps is as funny as it is moving.

A Concise History of Switzerland

A Concise History of Switzerland PDF Author: Clive H. Church
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107244196
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Get Book Here

Book Description
Despite its position at the heart of Europe and its quintessentially European nature, Switzerland's history is often overlooked within the English-speaking world. This comprehensive and engaging history of Switzerland traces the historical and cultural development of this fascinating but neglected European country from the end of the Dark Ages up to the present. The authors focus on the initial Confederacy of the Middle Ages; the religious divisions which threatened it after 1500 and its surprising survival amongst Europe's monarchies; the turmoil following the French Revolution and conquest, which continued until the Federal Constitution of 1848; the testing of the Swiss nation through the late nineteenth century and then two World Wars and the Depression of the 1930s; and the unparalleled economic and social growth and political success of the post-war era. The book concludes with a discussion of the contemporary challenges, often shared with neighbours, that shape the country today.

Hannibal's Oath

Hannibal's Oath PDF Author: John Prevas
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306824256
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
According to the ancient sources, Hannibal was nine years old when his father led him to the temple at Carthage and dipped the young boy's hands in the blood of the sacrificial victim. Before those gods, Hannibal swore an oath of eternal hatred toward Rome. Few images in history have managed to capture and hold the popular imagination quite like that of Hannibal, the fearless North African, perched on a monstrous elephant, leading his mercenaries over the Alps, and then, against all odds, descending the ice-covered peaks to challenge Rome in her own backyard for mastery of the ancient world. It was a bold move, and it established Hannibal as one of history's greatest commanders. But this same brilliant tactician is also one of history's most tragic figures; fate condemned him to win his battles but not his war against Rome. An internationally recognized expert on Hannibal for nearly thirty years, historian John Prevas has visited every Hannibal-related site and mountain pass, from Tunisia to Italy, Spain to Turkey, seeking evidence to dispel the myths surrounding Hannibal's character and his wars. Hannibal's Oath is an easily readable yet comprehensive biography of this iconic military leader--an epic account of a monumental and tragic life.

The Draw of the Alps

The Draw of the Alps PDF Author: Richard McClelland
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111150534
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Alps have exerted a hold over the German cultural imagination throughout the modern period, enthralling writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and tourists alike. The Draw of the Alps interrogates the dynamics of this fascination. Though philosophical and aesthetic responses to Alpine space have shifted over time, the Alps continue to captivate at an individual and collective level. This has resulted in myriad cultural engagements with Alpine space, as this interdisciplinary volume attests. Literature, photography, and philosophy continue to engage with the Alps as a place in which humans pursue their cognitive and aesthetic limits. At the same time, individuals engage physically with the alpine environment, whether as visitors through the well-established leisure industry, as enthusiasts of extreme sports, or as residents who feel the acute end of social and environmental change. Taking a transnational view of Alpine space, the volume demonstrates that the Alps are not geographically peripheral to the nation-state but are a vibrant locus of modern cultural production. As The Draw of the Alps attests, the Alps are nothing less than a crucible in which understandings of what it means to be human have been forged.

The Rhine

The Rhine PDF Author: Ben Coates
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
ISBN: 1473683033
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book Here

Book Description
From rowing the canals of Amsterdam to riding a cow through the Alps, via Cold War nuclear bunkers, raucous Gay Pride parades, tranquil Lake Constance and snowy mountain climbs, The Rhine blends travelogue and offbeat history to tell the fascinating story of how a great river helped shape a continent. SHORTLISTED FOR THE STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD The Rhine is one of the world's greatest rivers. Once forming the outer frontier of the Roman Empire, it flows 800 miles from the social democratic playground of the Netherlands, through the industrial and political powerhouses of Germany and France, to the wealthy mountain fortresses of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. For five years, Ben Coates lived alongside a major channel of the river in Rotterdam, crossing it daily, swimming and sailing in its tributaries. In The Rhine, he sets out by bicycle from the Netherlands where it enters the North Sea, following it through Germany, France and Liechtenstein, to where its source in the icy Alps. He explores the impact that the Rhine has had on European culture and history and finds out how influences have flowed along and across the river, shaping the people who live alongside it.

The Emotions of Internationalism

The Emotions of Internationalism PDF Author: Ilaria Scaglia
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198848323
Category : Emotions
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Emotions of Internationalism follows a number of international people and institutions active in the Alps in the 1920s and 1930s, exploring how they understood emotions and how they tried to employ them to achieve their political and non-political goals. Through the analysis of a broadspectrum of unpublished archival materials in four languages (English, French, Italian, and German), this study takes readers on an evocative, historical journey through the Alps. A wide range of characters populate its pages, from Heidi and the protagonists of novels and films set on the mountains,to Woodrow Wilson and other high-level political figures active both inside and outside of the League of Nations, to the alpinists and climbers engaged in hikes and international congresses, to the many children involved in camping trips, to the countless patients of the sanatoria for the treatmentof tuberculosis which for decades used to dot alpine villages and to excite the popular imagination.At the centre of the volume are people's emotions - real and imagined - from the resentment left after the First World War to the "friendship" evoked in speeches and concretely implemented in a number of alpine settings for a variety of purposes, to the "joy" that contemporaries saw as the key tonavigating the complexities of "modernity" and to avoiding another war. The result is a compelling overview of the institutions and people involved in international cooperation in the 1920s and 1930s, understood through the lens of the history of emotions.

The Savage Frontier

The Savage Frontier PDF Author: Matthew Carr
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620974282
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
A sweeping historical travelogue of the contentious border of France and Spain, in the great tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Jan Morris With the Catalonia crisis making international headlines, the unique cultural and geographic region bordering Spain and France has once again moved to the center of the world's attention. In The Savage Frontier, acclaimed author and journalist Matthew Carr uncovers the fascinating, multilayered story of the Pyrenees region—at once a forbidding, mountainous frontier zone of stunning beauty, home to a unique culture, and a site of sharp conflict between nations and empires. Carr follows the routes taken by monks, soldiers, poets, pilgrims, and refugees. He examines the people and events that have shaped the Pyrenees across the centuries, with a cast of characters including Napoleon, Hannibal, and Charlemagne; the eccentric British climber Henry Russell; Francisco Sabaté Llopart, the Catalan anarchist who waged a lone war against the Franco regime across the Pyrenees for years after the civil war; Camino de Santiago pilgrims; and the cellist Pablo Casals, who spent twenty-three years in exile only a few miles from the Spanish border to show his disgust and disapproval of the Spanish regime. The Savage Frontier is a book that will spark a new awareness and appreciation of one of the most haunting, magical, and dramatic landscapes on earth.