La Place de la Concorde Suisse was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1984. McPhee accompanies a Swiss army unit — the Section de Renseignements (reconnaissance section) — on its annual training exercises in the Bernese Oberland. The Swiss army is a citizen militia: every Swiss male serves, keeps his weapon and equipment at home, and reports for annual refresher training. The country’s defense strategy is total mobilization: within forty-eight hours, Switzerland can put 650,000 trained soldiers in the field.
McPhee uses this unusual subject to explore Swiss national character: the precision, the preparedness, the conviction that peace is maintained not by good intentions but by the credible capacity for violence. The soldiers he profiles are civilians in uniform — a teacher, a banker, an architect — who take their military service with absolute seriousness because they understand it as the foundation of Swiss independence. The training exercises take place in Alpine terrain of extraordinary beauty, and McPhee renders both the beauty and the military precision with equal attention.
The book is slight (barely 150 pages) but dense with implication. Switzerland’s peculiarity — a democratic, prosperous, peaceful country that maintains universal military service and can mobilize faster than any nation in Europe — becomes, in McPhee’s hands, a meditation on the relationship between freedom and readiness, between peace and the permanent preparation for war.
Collecting La Place de la Concorde Suisse
First edition (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1984): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $25–$60
- Very good: $10–$25
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
The Swiss Army
La Place de la Concorde Suisse (1984) is McPhee’s portrait of the Swiss Army — the citizen militia that serves as both national defense and a defining institution of Swiss identity. McPhee embeds with a mountain division during exercises in the Alps, observing the improbable spectacle of bankers, watchmakers, and cheese-makers playing soldier with extraordinary precision and seriousness. The book is a study of Swiss character through the lens of military service, and like all McPhee, it reveals far more about its subject than seems possible in its modest page count.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes this interesting? The Swiss Army is genuinely unique — a citizen militia in a country that has not fought a war since 1815 but maintains universal male conscription and a defense infrastructure (including mountain fortresses and demolition-ready bridges) that would be the envy of any NATO country.