If [Lyons'] chapters offer a versatile, stand-alone quality, they also link together in a smooth narrative and consistent analytical framework. A resounding strength of this book is the breadth of sources that inform it … [An] elegant, sophisticated rendition of the Pyrenees' modern cultural history.

Canadian Journal of History

Lyons provides a kaleidoscopic view of the Pyrenean borderlands … This book is a welcome addition to the existing literature on the Pyrenees; it will be of interest to both a scholarly and a general readership.

H-France

This comprehensive volume examines the Pyrenees as social construct through varied lenses of the modern world that move far beyond the mountains' geographic presence, populations, and ecologies … [This] work powerfully reminds us of the changing human beliefs and actions that not only construct environments but also alter, neglect, and damage complex ecological systems. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

CHOICE

Lyons admirably demonstrates how frontiers and borderlands are flexible, malleable, constructed and, at times, real things … [He] is very convincing in demonstrating the variety of different constructions the landscape has been subject to, and how such constructions reflect the larger historical period they emerged from and the larger concerns of outsiders and tourists.

EuropeNow

A total history of the Pyrenees. Martyn Lyons is an engaging expert guide, leading us through scientists, Romantic travel-writers, peasant customs, refugees, mountaineers, ecologists and anthropologists.

Sharif Gemie, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, University of South Wales, UK

Martyn Lyons takes the reader on a fascinating journey through Pyrenean landscapes across two and a half centuries. Drawing upon the writings of a wide range of observers, he makes a very welcome, highly readable contribution to our understanding of a culturally and linguistically diverse borderland.

Sandra Ott, Associate Professor, University of Nevada, Reno, USA