Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 outdated, american view July 25, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I feel cheated that I purchased this book. There is alot of precise, detailed information on prices/costs and finding employment that are very localised and went quickly out of date and are very boring to sift thru. But the most surprising thing to me was the author's very poor work experience at the end of his time in Switzerland influencing his views on the entire country and population so negatively. I was hoping to gain insight into the swiss, and all I came away with after reading this book was an insight into the author.
Do not buy this book if you are looking for insight into the swiss or help to decide to move to switzerland and live among the Swiss! Only buy this if you want to read a not horribly well written or interesting and out of date account of one's experience living in Zurich.
 Definitely not a whitewash May 21, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Are you considering a job offer in Switzerland? This work provides fair warning about the obstacles that you and your spouse will face as an immigrant: a chauvinistic, closed society of incomprehensible, dialect-speaking burghers obsessed with money and reluctant to trust foreigners even after years of acquaintanceship; high rents and prices for inferior food -- especially beef and chicken -- clothing, and automobiles; undisguised resentment that you are denying a job opportunity to a Swiss citizen; discrimination in career advancement and promotion. Most expatriates leave after a year in order to preserve their marriages. Take these caveats to heart before succumbing to the temptations of Alpine skiing and clean, fresh-water swimming. And read this book before deciding whether to accept the job offer.
An honest, unsparing, accurate assessment of the Swiss May 21, 2005
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This work touches a sensitive nerve for Swiss readers like myself, because it captures the natives' xenophobia, chauvinism, insularity, fear of assimilation by their German neighbors to the north, and general feelings of inferiority and prejudice. The Swiss are not known for great works of art or music or for educational accomplishments outside the fields of medicine and biochemistry/pharmacology or for feminism or even sensitivity to women, and so a book by an American author that pokes fun at these deficiencies serves only to aggravate its subjects' phobias. The surprising popularity of this work in Switzerland should be taken as testimony to this volume's trenchant effectiveness.
A jewel of a memoir which captures Swiss beauty and peace September 27, 2002
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
A jewel of a memoir which captures the beauty and peacefulness of Switzerland as well as the glacial stolidity of its inhabitants. A perceptive if irreverent account of everything Swiss from age and sex discrimination to xenophobia, articulately written in a spirit of satire with wit, humor, and a tincture of scholarship by a highly educated American. Provides a travel guide, with especial emphasis on skiing, hiking, and fine dining. Discusses questionable Swiss investment practices, including some that would be illegal in the U.S., as well as religious prejudices and educational deficiencies of Swiss banking and investment professionals.
Informative, entertaining, witty, and humorous June 6, 2000
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a German who taught forestry at Arizona State University in the U.S., I find this author highly articulate - a rare quality in an American! I learned many new English words, for which I am grateful. I also received much new information about places in Switzerland which I thought I had known. Finally, I found this book informative, witty, entertaining, and humorous.
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