Russell Shorto is the author of five books and is a contributing writer at the The New York Times Magazine. His books have been published in fourteen languages and have won numerous awards. From 2008 to 2013, he was the director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam.
“This finely spun and illuminating history of Amsterdam explores
both a city and an idea. . . . A pleasure to savor on many
levels.”
—The Seattle Times
“Rich and eventful. . . . [A] book that easily fuses large cultural
trends with intimately personal stories.”
—The New York Times
“An absorbing history of a fascinating place.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“[A] masterpiece.”
—The Daily Beast
“Engaging new history. . . . It brims with the sights, smells and
sounds of a nearly thousand-year-old bustling, mercantile city. . .
. Countless books have been written about Holland’s capital city. .
. . [Shorto’s] contribution stands as a sparkling addition to the
lot.”
—Associated Press
“Shorto’s brilliant follow-up to his previous book on Dutch
Manhattan (The Island at the Center of the World) is an expertly
told history of a city of new, shocking freedoms and the
tough-minded people that developed them.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Insightful history. . . . Mr. Shorto masterfully describes how
Amsterdam was built in only a few generations by reclaiming water
from the sea, literally by hand in the 1600s. And he brings to life
how the city attracted—with promises of freedom and tolerance—the
most energetic people from all over Europe to create a free civic
and economic society that became a model for the American Republic
a century later.”
—Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner, The Wall Street Journal,
Favorite Books of 2013
“Entertaining history.”
—The New Yorker
“Delightfully eccentric history. . . . Eye-opening and
entertaining, it's popular history of the best sort.”
—Michael Giltz, Favorite Books of the Year, Huffington Post
“Sometimes it’s clear from the off that a book is special, and that
indefinable sense took hold quickly here. . . . An enthralling tale
of radicalism and tolerance of strange and otherwise anathema
beliefs and ideas.”
—Alex Crowley, Best Books of the Year, Publishers Weekly
“Masterful reporting, vivid history—the past and present are
equally alive in this book.”
—James Gleick, author of The Information: A History, A Theory, A
Flood
“Shorto is an excellent storyteller and rootler of strange facts,
and Amsterdam should be issued as standard kit for anyone visiting
the city.”
—The Guardian (UK)
“Russell Shorto writes engagingly about how a city can engender
ideas—order, tolerance, comfort, egalitarianism,
entrepreneurship—and in turn be shaped by
them. Amsterdam argues convincingly that Western
liberalism has been greatly influenced by this small, modest,
crazy-yet-conventional place.”
—Witold Rybczynski, author of How Architecture Works: A
Humanist’s Toolkit
“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.”
—Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland
“Russell Shorto loves Amsterdam, I love this book.”
—Job Cohen, former mayor of Amsterdam
“Luminous. . . . An entertaining history full of deftly drawn
characters and intoxicating ideas which have made Amsterdam the
birthplace of liberalism in its many and shifting
incarnations.”
—Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor & Publisher, The Nation
“[A] smart, elegant book. . . . A wonderfully readable account of
the city that Shorto has come to call home.”
—Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 and 1493
“Vigorous, erudite and eminently readable.”
—Kirkus Reviews
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