‘Standard kit for anyone visiting the city’ Guardian
‘Rich and eventful … a book that easily fuses large cultural trends with intimately personal stories’ New York Times
‘The story of a great city that has shaped the soul of the world. Masterful reporting, vivid history’ James Gleick
In this ever-surprising and effortlessly erudite portrait, Russell Shorto traces the idiosyncratic evolution of Amsterdam and examines its role as the fount of liberalism. Weaving in his own experiences of his adopted home, he delivers a delightful and intellectually engaging story of the city from the building of the first canals in the 1300s through the brutal struggle for Dutch independence and its golden age as the capital of a vast empire, to its complex present in which its cherished ideals are being questioned anew.
‘Rich and eventful … a book that easily fuses large cultural trends with intimately personal stories’ New York Times
‘The story of a great city that has shaped the soul of the world. Masterful reporting, vivid history’ James Gleick
In this ever-surprising and effortlessly erudite portrait, Russell Shorto traces the idiosyncratic evolution of Amsterdam and examines its role as the fount of liberalism. Weaving in his own experiences of his adopted home, he delivers a delightful and intellectually engaging story of the city from the building of the first canals in the 1300s through the brutal struggle for Dutch independence and its golden age as the capital of a vast empire, to its complex present in which its cherished ideals are being questioned anew.
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Reviews
Shorto sprinkles the book with personal anecdotes that illustrate how history suffuses the present
Shorto's fine portraits of individuals are in the Amsterdam tradition, and he has an Amsterdammer's feel for this backwater town that remains the world's laboratory of liberalism
Shorto is an excellent storyteller and rootler of strange facts, and Amsterdam should be issued as standard kit for anyone visiting the city
Rich and eventful ... a book that easily fuses large cultural trends with intimately personal stories
An often brilliant - and always enjoyable - investigation of liberalism's Dutch roots. Shorto is once again revealed as a passionate and persuasive historian of culture and ideas
The story of a great city that has shaped the soul of the world. Masterful reporting, vivid history - the past and present are equally alive in this book
A tender, truthful love letter to his adopted city . . . Shorto's lively book is true to its salty, contradictory character