The Island at the Center of the World : The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (Paperback)

from Othemts

Shorto composes a brief, popular history of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, specifically focusing on the settlement on Manhattan island.  He contends that the Dutch colony is often overlooked in American history and what is known about it is generally based on English sources that downplay th...

from sscarllet

I enjoyed this book and I will definitly read it agai. Shorto did amazing research and it really shows. I feel like this is a pretty definitive book on the early history of Manhattan. Shorto brought long dead - and sometimes ill remembered - early Americans to life. I'll never walk down the stree...

from setnahkt

Author Russell Shorto regrets that the Dutch presence in North American is usually seen as a sort of comic preface to the main event - Peter Stuyvesant and his wooden leg stump around a little bit but Nieuw Amsterdam quickly becomes New York and it's the Big Apple rather than the Big Tulip. In Th...

from dougwood57

Shorto's book on the Dutch founding of New Amsterdam adds an important dimension to our understanding of early American history. A fascinating detailed story including power struggles, interplay between New Amsterdam and the home country, Director-General Peter Stuyvesant versus Adriaen van der D...

from cameling

Manhattan, or New Amsterdam as it was known in the 1620s had a short colonization under the Dutch who founded New Netherlands before it was seized by the English in 1664. Under the directorship of Peter Minuit, famous not only for establishing this new colony for the Dutch but for purchasing it f...