Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America by Russell Shorto

Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America by Russell Shorto

'Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America' by Russell Shorto

The often brilliant Russell Shorto already wrote about the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in his 2004 book, Island at the Center of the World . With Taking Manhattan , he builds on that account, focusing on how the harbor town became foundational to American identity.

Until recently, the Dutch presence in the New World was regarded an anomaly by American historians and their role in shaping the future republic as negligible. Shorto takes them to task. New Amsterdam wasn’t free of bigotry but was an island of relative tolerance, free of the Puritanical zeal of New England. New Amste