Andrew Beattie's latest book lies at the intersection of two genres, travel guides and travel essays. Although the book falls short of fulfilling the title's promise as a “cultural history,” the potpourri of geographical, historical, political, and economic facts about the Danubian lands will entertain and inform tourists exploring the region. Beattie's enterprise is admirable, as he manages to provide interesting information to travelers exploring no fewer than eight countries: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania.
This author's earlier writings focused on cities and states, such as the Czech and Slovak Republics, Syria, Cairo, Cracow, and Prague. Starting with his 2006 study of the Alps, Beattie examined larger geographic units. However, the author's attempt to prove that the Danube brings together European countries is hindered by his own insistence that “if the Danube does have a unique and unifying culture, it is political and contemporary, rather than historical or cultural” (xix). This statement contradicts Beattie's own emphasis on the Roman, the Habsburg, and the Cold War inheritances for all the countries on the Danube.
Using a wide range of travel accounts, especially from the last two centuries, Beattie recreates a wilder, more unpredictable Danube than the one people experience nowadays. Recurrent floods, unorganized channels, and rapid currents plagued the life of the inhabitants along the Danube. For example, in the 1960s, the building of a huge hydroelectric barrage submerged the Iron Gates gorge beneath water but could not fully erase the memory of earlier dangers boats had to face when navigating this section of the Danube. Reproducing accounts from the pre-1960s, Beattie's dynamic prose refashions the Danube into an untamed animal.
Beattie also excels in providing accounts of the Danubian lands from his own experience. The author brings to life the Hohenzollern castle in Sigmaringen and allows readers to explore courtyards, corridors, rooms, and halls together with the guided tour in which he took part. From the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the author weaves an impressive number of stories into a fabric that covers the Danube with a romanticizing veil.
Following the Danube from its spring to the Black Sea should ensure a logical, sequential, predictable framework for Beattie's prose. However, the author escapes such a limiting outline with his stream-of-conscious style. For example, in the span of only one page, Beattie starts with a description of the former Roman camp of Carnuntum, offers some biographical information about Emperor Marcus Aurelius, mentions a sixteenth-century Zurich translation of this emperor's Meditations, and comments on how the philosopher John Stuart Mill admired this Roman emperor's work (109–10). Although not all readers might enjoy Beattie's rapid change of topics, there is no doubt that this author writes evocative descriptions of buildings and landscapes. He has the ability to conjure images, smells, and sounds, which help recreate the atmosphere of a place, such as the Gellért Hotel and Baths in Budapest (165). Beattie's prose flows like the Danube: smooth in some parts but troubled by fast “currents” in other sections.
The book is replete with interesting facts and is an enjoyable read. However, detailed references are absent, the pictures have no captions, and in some cases Beattie provides erroneous information. Maria Theresa could not have visited the Hungarian settlement of Vác in 1784, four years after her death (147), and historians have long ago proven that the thirteenth-century Hungarian state was far from being “thoroughly Christianized” (154). Even though Beattie targets a larger audience than just academics, he should not dismiss his readers as easily entertained and should reduce the number of exaggerated statements. Writing that “Germany was once a patchwork of states ruled over by squabbling potentates who sprinkled the country with castles and palaces” (3) and characterizing Empress Maria Theresa as a “palace builder and Danube straightener” (159) might make for a nice turn of phrase but does not do justice to the complexity of history.
Despite this book's shortcomings, and even though I disagree with Beattie's Eurocentric assertion that “no other river in the world can match the Danube for the sheer historical richness of the cities and landscapes through which it passes” (ix), this remains an enjoyable book that encourages tourists to travel down the historic and contemporary Danube.
