“... [Traces] the itineraries of a few tourists, from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, and to consider where they went, what they did, and how they liked it ...” (cf. preface).
The author was an influential evolutionary embryologist — studying the timing of embryological development and its influence on the evolution of a species — who loved Switzerland, especially the Alps. His theory of which pass Hannibal might have used with all his elephants and troops has been supported by recent archeological evidence.