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More copies of this ISBNThis title in other editionseBook editionsPanther Soup: Travels Through Europe in War and Peaceby John Gimlette
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:In 2004, John Gimlette set off across Europe, following in the footsteps of one of the greatest armies ever assembled: the United States forces of 1944-45. His guide (emotionally if not geographically) was Putnam Flint, an eighty-six-year-old Bostonian who had landed in Marseille in the midst of World War II with his tank destroyer battalion, nicknamed The Panthers. With Flints help, Gimlette traveled back through the war to try to grasp the physical, social, and psychological realities of the smashed and sodden continent that Europe had become. Panther Soup is the heartfelt, keenly observed—and often unexpectedly humorous—chronicle of that journey: a brilliant hybrid of travelogue and personalized military history. From Marseille, north to Dijon and Alsace, Paris and Lorraine, across the Rhine into Germany, and eventually south through the Alps into Austria, Gimlette provides a vivid impression of the route as it is today, from spectacular landscapes to cities that have risen from cinders. He reveals the ways in which the war is both memorialized and buried, and meshes his account with recollections from Flint and other survivors they meet along the way: former enemies and refugees, heroines and résistants, children of the blitzkrieg. Here is an uncommonly evocative mixture of past and present, a meeting of cultures, and a deeply personal assessment of one of the most tumultuous moments in world history. Review:"Overlong and slyly self-important, travel writer Gimlette's third book takes the recollections of WWII veteran Putnam Flint and combines them with Gimlette's own European tour for a then-and-now travelogue that doesn't ever quite connect. Flint, an 86-year-old Bostonian who traveled from Provence to Austria with his tank destroyer battalion during the closing days of the war, is winning, inquisitive and has a writer's gift for precise language, telling Gimlette, 'In combat, you hear guns, and it's like a musical score. The story unrolls from there.' Unfortunately, Gimlette can't help but stretch the metaphor to the breaking point: 'In Flint's case, it was a complex score, and no two recitals were ever quite the same.' The two-thirds spent with Gimlette's own travels are often tedious; he has a fondness for looking for old brothels and new strip clubs, and a heavy hand with generalizations: 'For the French, culture is duty, for the Americans it's pleasure.' The combination of Gimlette's fatuous modern opinions and a tense historical memoir never quite gels; Flint's worthwhile stories deserve better. Illustrations." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) About the AuthorJohn Gimlette has won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and the Wanderlust Travel Writing Award, and he writes regularly for The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and Condé Nast Traveller. When not traveling, he practices law in London, where he lives with his family. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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Travel » Europe » General
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