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Amsterdam
Amsterdam is not just any city. Despite its relative size it has stood alongside its larger cousins - Paris, London, Berlin - and has influenced the modern world to a degree that few other cities have. Sweeping across the city's colourful thousand year history, Amsterdam will bring the place to life: its sights and smells; its politics and people. Concentrating on two significant periods - the late 1500s to the mid 1600s and then from the Second World War to the present, Russell Shorto's masterful biography looks at Amsterdam's central preoccupations. Just as fin-de-siecle Vienna was the birthplace of psychoanalysis, seventeenth century Amsterdam was the wellspring of liberalism, and today it is still a city that takes individual freedom very seriously. A wonderfully evocative book that takes Amsterdam's dramatic past and present and populates it with a whole host of colourful characters, Amsterdam is the definitive book on this great city.
Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Family secrets emerge as a best-selling author dives into the history of the mob in small-town America. Best-selling author Russell Shorto, praised for his incisive works of narrative history, never thought to write about his own past. He grew up knowing his grandfather and namesake was a small-town mob boss but maintained an unspoken family vow of silence. Then an elderly relative prodded: You’re a writer—what are you gonna do about the story? Smalltime is a mob story straight out of central casting—but with a difference, for the small-town mob, which stretched from Schenectady to Fresno, is a mostly unknown world. The location is the braw...
The Island at the Center of the World
When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed. Drawing on the archives of the New Netherland Project, Russell Shorto has created a gripping narrative that transforms our understanding of early America. The Dutch colony pre-dated the 'original' thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.
Descartes' Bones
Sixteen years after René Descartes' death in Stockholm in 1650, a pious French ambassador exhumed the remains of the controversial philosopher to transport them back to Paris. Thus began a 350-year saga that saw Descartes' bones traverse a continent, passing between kings, philosophers, poets, and painters. But as Russell Shorto shows in this deeply engaging book, Descartes' bones also played a role in some of the most momentous episodes in history, which are also part of the philosopher's metaphorical remains: the birth of science, the rise of democracy, and the earliest debates between reason and faith. Descartes' Bones is a flesh-and-blood story about the battle between religion and rationalism that rages to this day. A New York Times Notable Book
Revolution Song: The Story of America's Founding in Six Remarkable Lives
“An engaging piece of historical detective work and narrative craft.” —Chicago Tribune At a time when America’s founding principles are being debated as never before, Russell Shorto looks back to the era in which those principles were forged. In Revolution Song, Shorto weaves the lives of six people into a seamless narrative that casts fresh light on the range of experience in colonial America on the cusp of revolution. The result is a brilliant defense of American values with a compelling message: the American Revolution is still being fought today, and its ideals are worth defending.
Summary of Russell Shorto's Smalltime
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was home for the holidays one night when someone brought up the subject of Frankie Filia, my mother’s cousin who had come home to visit. He was a jazz singer who had left town a lifetime ago for Las Vegas, but he had recently decided to retire and come home. #2 I knew my grandfather was a mobster, but I didn’t know the details. I didn’t want to learn more, and I never did. I was afraid of what those details might reveal about my family. #3 I can't do this. I know that at the center of this story is my grandfather, a dimly lit figure who had a different life outside of my grandmother's house. I know that the research would lead me to the source of her pain. #4 I was named after my grandfather, who died of a heart attack at the age of 57. I didn’t think about him for a year or so after that night at the club, until I saw his name on the back of a membership card.
Summary of Russell Shorto's Amsterdam
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 A day in Amsterdam begins with me leaving my apartment with my toddler son in my arms, strapping him into his seat between the handlebars of my bicycle, and setting off through the quiet, generally breezy streets of our neighborhood. #2 Amsterdam’s tolerance of vice is made apparent when you visit the neighborhood surrounding the school. The streets are lined with stores that sell sex toys, advertising agencies, and strip clubs. But when you live there for a while, the exotic becomes mundane. #3 The neighborhood of Nicolaas Maesstraat and Frans van Mierisstraat, which was home to the city’s elite, has names that instantly give it some of the luster of Amsterdam’s age of glory. But as you go farther away from the center, the houses get plainer. #4 Iman and her husband were legal residents of the Netherlands, but their legal residence was deemed a reason for untrustworthiness. The decision was later reversed, and Iman’s sister was allowed to visit.
Gospel Truth
With the skill of a seasoned journalist and the passion of an amateur sleuth, Russell Shorto offers a radical revision of the gospel story--a new composite of Jesus based on scientific research--supported by some of our most conservative religious scholars. A vivid and sometimes shocking reconstruction of the life and times of Jesus, GOSPEL TRUTH will change forever the way we see Jesus.
Summary of Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In the year 1608, a man of ambition, intellect, and arrogance walked across London. He was a man of his age, and his complex personality was built around an impressive self-confidence. He was heading toward St. Paul’s Cathedral, which then, as now, dominated the skyline.
Nature's Mutiny
Europe where the sun dares scarce appear For freezing meteors and congealed cold.' - Christopher Marlowe In this innovative and compelling work of environmental history, Philipp Blom chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, a crisis that would transform the entire social and political fabric of Europe. While hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, by the end of the sixteenth century the temperature plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbours were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and ‘frost fairs’ were erected on a frozen Thames – with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city. Recounting the dee...
