The Alps
by Stephen O'Shea
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...