the island at the center of the world by russell shorto

They were people of their time, doing what they wanted and thought best - they weren’t living for It is a vast stretch to imagine that they would in any way be proud. What do you think they would make of Manhattan in the 21st century, with its $35 million penthouses in the sky and corrosive inequalities? And of courseĪ: To be honest, I am not very good at questions that ask you to rethink history: What would the world be like if the Nazis had won, or if the Dutch had kept New York? But surely the settlers of Manhattan Q: The essential argument of the book is that Manhattan was ever thus - that Dutch settlers with their enlightened views and penchant for acceptance and considerable ambitions set the templateįor what Manhattan, and by extension America, would become. And I learned there is a lively group of scholars who have grown up around his work. Publishing the archives of the Dutch colony of New Netherland since 1974. Then, as you say, I got to know Charles Gehring, who has been translating and And looking at his marker (which, by the way, has severalĮrrors of fact on it), I started to wonder about the reality underneath the cartoonish image I had of the Dutch who founded the place. Mark’s in the Bowery, where Peter Stuyvesant is buried. This case, I loved New York and was living in the East Village, just down the street from St. That, for me personally, was a way to deal with the Catholic faith I grew up with but then abandoned - I was trying to learn what I could about the Jesus of history, as distinct from the Jesus of faith. My first book, “Gospel Truth,” was about the search for the historical Jesus. Can you tell us a bit about your relationship to New York, and particularlyĪ: Having done this for a while, I’ve learned that as a writer I have a tendency to go for origins. Not every writer, necessarily, would have taken such a keen interest in all the arcana. Q: Russell, as you lay out in the prologue, the book was essentially made possible because of the translation of thousands of pages of documents by a committed scholar, from an antiquated strain ofĭutch, which had been sitting in an archive in Albany. Read the review of the book that appeared in The New York Times in 2004 and join us with questions and comments. Happily, the author is on hand to converse with us.

Shorto’s book was selected after a close vote Time around, readers were asked to nominate the selection for the club, and Mr. The Big City Book Club is discussing Russell Shorto’s best-selling and lively history of Dutch settlement in New York, “The Island at the Center of the World” below in the comments section.

The island at the center of the world by russell shorto