Biking with Bismarck

Noted travel writer Matthew Stevenson sets out by train and bicycle from his home in Geneva, Switzerland, and rides from the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian War around Sedan to Paris, Tours, and Biarritz.

The book is an easy blend of travel, diplomatic history, literature, and French politics.

Along the way Stevenson sees the trenches around Verdun, the siege lines at Sedan, the cities of Paris and Orleans, and the haunts of Biarrtiz, which so enticed German Chancellor Bismarck.

Stevenson writes with empathy and humor, making him the ideal companion for this little tour of France.

Matthew Mills Stevenson was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island, attending Buckley Country Day School and Friends Academy. His university degrees are from Bucknell and Columbia universities, and he spent a year abroad with the Institute of European Studies in London and Vienna. He moved to Geneva, Switzerland in 1991 and worked in banking until 2004. He is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine, and the host of The Travel Hour, a radio program. He was a panelist on World Radio Switzerland's Not So Foreign Affairs, a weekly broadcast. His articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications in the U.S. and Europe. His books include: Letters of Transit, Mentioned in Dispatches, An April Across America, Remembering the Twentieth Century Limited, Whistle Stopping America, and Reading the Rails, a work of travel, history and politics. Recent books include Appalachia Spring, a drive across the coal belts of America; The Revolution as a Dinner Party: Across China with Edgar Snow, Mao Tse-tung, Joseph Stilwell, Chiang Kai-shek, and Sun Yat-sen; Biking with Bismarck: A Little Tour in France, a ride across French history; and Our Man in Iran, an account of travels in that troubled land.