Rating: 
Summary: A splendid and gripping book by a masterful writer
Review: Over the past few years, I've begun reading histories of Manhattan and this particular book is among the very best. It illuminates the hitherto shadowy world of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, and persuasively, vividly demonstrates the cultural debt we owe those early settlers. Perhaps most importantly, Russell Shorto infuses his story with suspense, humor, pathos and brilliant characterization. WOW! What a terrific writer!
Rating:
Summary: Dutch New York brought back to life.
Review: Russell Shorto's narrative of the Dutch period of New York City (and State) has provided readers with a great insight into a world long ago but not long gone. "The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America", based partly on the research/translating work of Charles Gehring, is a good introduction to this neglected period in America's history, and will also surprise those well-versed in the subject. His thesis, that the New Netherland Dutch influenced the development of American history, society, and law is not entirely new, but he does expand upon our pre-existing notions of that influence.
But even though not everything here is new to some of us, what the real accomplishment is--and Shorto deserves our appreciation for it--that this book finally makes this history accessible. While other books have covered this ground, they were so bogged down with statistics and numbers that they were almost unreadable. Shorto's narrative style and his ability to bring such colorful people back to life (Hudson, Stuyvesant, van der Donck, et al.), makes his book accessible to those who might not be inclined to buy a book on this subject. On a personal level, Shorto's "The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America", much like Burrows and Wallace's "Gotham" brought the ancient days of my city back to life. For a moment, as I sat in Bowling Green, I was able to erase the tall buildings and populate that area with trees and small, gable-roofed houses. I could wipe away the old Custom-House and see the fort that once stood in its place. That is how good the writing is. And that's what I meant by saying Shorto's wonderful account is that of a world long ago but not long gone.
Rocco Dormarunno,
author of THE FIVE POINTS CONCLUDED, a Novel
Rating: 
Summary: Giving Historical Revisionism a Good Name
Review: Russell Shorto's wonderful book about the early Dutch settlers in lower Manhattan at once sets the record straight and explains New York's uniqueness. It was the Dutch who settled Manhattan, not the English. In fact they built a wall (at Wall Street) to keep the English out (not to keep the Indians out, as is popularly thought). The detail about daily life in early Manhattan is emerging from old records only now being translated from 17th Century Dutch. Shorto sums up the principal difference between early contemporary settlements in New England with the word "tolerance." From its earliest years, Manhattan represented a remarkable ethnic diversity, and it was the vibrant tension of heterogeneous rivalry which energized the early colony. We meet fur traders, lawyers, carpenters, innkeepers, soldiers, Indians, saloon-keepers, and a larger than life peg-legged administrator named Peter Stuyvesant. We watch the early Dutch settlers build the city; we see exactly how it thrived as a trade entrepot, and we finally understand how it came to be transferred into British hands without a shot. It is a fascinating story, and Shorto brings it to life by parting the thick haze of history with a daunting catalog of historical fact. Shorto's editor was lax or timorous in dealing with his prolix prose, and the reader is invited to find the longest sentence; my best was 103 words (page 51).
Rating: 
Summary: The Dutch Were Advocates of Multiculturalism?
Review: Shorto's book is uneven. For people who know little about early colonial history, it provides some interesting information about New Amsterdam and the politics of colonization. The most dynamic part of the book is the tension between Stuyvesant, the director of New Amsterdam, and van der Donck, attorney, activist, and reformer who sought to give the colonists some voice in the West India Company's control over the town's governance. Although Shorto promises to provide new and vital information about New Amsterdam based on the recent translation of heretofore unavailable (in English) records, the promise is not really fulfilled. The new information consists, essentially, of accounts of law suits, brawls, and mismanagement. I would encourage readers to overlook this unfulfilled promise as typical publishing hype. Harder to overlook is Shorto's own political agenda. At every opportunity, Shorto insists on telling readers that New Amsterdam was a diverse community where blacks, Indians, and Jews were "tolerated" and that New Amsterdam laid the foundation for contemporary America's embrace of diversity and multiculturalism. This sort of redundancy is tremendously annoying--even somewhat insulting. Moreover, it reflects a lack of critical vision that is unacceptable in a history book. The mantra of "strength in diversity" is largely wishful thinking, and there are any number of examples that illustrate how unrestrained diversity weakens society. Consider the rise of identity politics over the last two decades and the fate of public education owing to the huge number of non-English-speaking students in our classes. Shorto would have produced a better book if he had stuck to history and left his political editorializing at home.
Rating:
Summary: informative and entertaining, a bit too imaginative
Review: The Island at the Center of the World is a worthy if flawed read. Two aspects in particular may annoy a reader--Shorto's use of imagined scenes and his stretching to make a point of the influence of Dutch New Amsterdam.
I have to admit, the imagined scenes grated a bit on me throughout the book. They come far too frequently and lasted too long for my own liking. Too many passages began with "we might imagine", or "perhaps he . . .", or "it isn't hard to picture . . ." A few selected scenes like these could have been effective but used as frequently as they were they seemed to mar the book rather than improve it. This is more stylistic than substantive and while some readers may find it as grating as I did, others may enjoy the vivid intimacy of them.
The other major flaw is Shorto's penchant to reach a bit to make his point that New Amsterdam had far-reaching influence on the America we have today. Any writer, of course, is going to push his/her thesis; the question is how far they strain the reader's credulity in doing so. The story of the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam is interesting enough in its own right, and its influence important enough in its own right that Shorto needn't have pushed and strained so much, as if to make sure the reader felt "justified" in reading the book. When he starts to talk about Cole Slaw (more than once) as an example of the Dutch influence, you know he's walked a bit over the edge. In that case, and a few others, he diminishes the colony's importance rather than highlights it.
Those two flaws aside, and one can easily set them aside while reading, Island is an informative, entertaining read. The story of the New Amsterdam colony is told in some detail (at times, perhaps, as is often the case with single-topic histories, too much detail), filling in what is probably a large gap in most people's knowledge of former New York (especially those who don't live here). Shorto focuses of course on Peter Stuyvesant, probably the one name most people can remember, but he broadens out his character greatly. He focuses even more on Adriaen van der Donck, a young lawyer, previously unknown or little-known, whose presence was a major influence (though again Shorto at times seems to strain this point) on the colony. The dispute between these two and what they represent make up much of the book's description of the colony.
A welcome decision on Shorto's part was to place his discussion of the colony in a larger context, both in terms of what was happening elsewhere in America with the better known English colonies and as well the lesser-known European history. He does a good job of clearly and concisely explaining issues of succession, of civil war, of multiple wars between empires, etc. There is just enough that the reader understands the context but not so much that the reader is bogged down or loses sight ever of the books' main focus.
All in all, the facts are interesting, the people more so, and if Shorto pushes a bit too far in trying prove a Dutch influence on present-day America or is a bit too imaginative, those flaws are easily spotted, almost as easily ignored, and mar the book only slightly. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Richly Detailed, Deeply Researched and Engagingly Written
Review: The jacket copy for this fascinating book nowhere describes author Russell Shorto as a professional historian. True, he has written two other books on subjects dealing with the past (the historical Jesus and the relationship of psychiatry to religion), but his blurb writers conspicuously avoid the "H" word.Just as well. He writes sprightly, almost novelistic prose --- and he is indeed a man with a mission: He wants to destroy the common conceptions (misconceptions, he calls them) that English influence was the only force that brought New York City into being and that the nearly 40-year existence of the New Netherland colony was merely an unimportant preliminary throat-clearing before the "real story" began with the English takeover in 1664. He goes about this worthy task with missionary zeal and literary zest. His main historical source is a huge mass of documents from the New Netherland period now being translated in an obscure office in the New York State Library by historian and linguistic scholar Charles Gehring, to whom he give full credit. But he has also unearthed all sorts of fascinating documents, both historical gems and delightful trivia, in England, in the Netherlands, all over the USA and in various odd venues on the European continent. The names that every school kid knows from that era -- Peter Minuit and Peter Stuyvesant -- are duly present; Stuyvesant, of course is a major player in the drama. But to them Shorto has added at least two others -- Adriaen Van der Donck, a young Dutch lawyer who fought long and hard to moderate Stuyvesant's rigidity and intolerance in favor of a more liberal philosophy of government, and Willem Klieft, a bullheaded bureaucrat whose foolish pugnacity nearly ruined the whole enterprise. All four of these men, and a fascinating cast of lesser players, are drawn in the round with novelistic verve. If you think "history" is a synonym for "dull," this book will change your mind. There are occasional patches of needlessly purple prose and hyperbole, but they are easily negotiated. Shorto places the founding of the colony firmly in the historical context of the military and mercantile rivalries among England, Holland and Spain. New York's "father city" was not London but Amsterdam, he argues, and his evidence is convincing. (The vast colony was New Netherland; the island city was New Amsterdam). It is more than a matter of surviving Dutch street names and family names in the region; it involves a basic philosophy of religious and racial toleration, a system of representative government and a spirit of inquiry and adventure that survive in the city today. The original New Netherland colony, founded in 1625, took in everything from present-day Delaware to Connecticut. Manhattan Island was the nerve center because of its stretegic position on a fine harbor and a broad river that led north into the interior of the unexplored continent. The true hero of Shorto's tale is Van der Donck, a man now so utterly forgotten that even the single portrait of him that survives may not even be him at all. Shorto makes him out a gutsy battler for justice and tolerance and a careful recorder of every detail he could find about the wild new land he came to love. Indians, of course, are a major presence in this story, and Shorto is careful to do them justice. You can almost hear him cheering when Willem Klieft, who stirred up a needless and bloody war against them, is shipwrecked and drowned. There are all sorts of delightful asides, digressions and details in this book (did you know that the classic log cabin of the American frontier seems to have originated with Finnish craftsmen imported into the Swedish-settled southern regions of New Netherland?). It is hard, when you think of the great metropolis of asphalt and steel that is Manhattan Island today, to imagine it as a wilderness with clear streams, a few Indian paths and dense vegetation, which is what it was during its New Amsterdam period (1625-1664) --- but Shorto has done a splendid job of imagining it for us. If that describes the historian's job, then Shorto is a first-rate historian, no matter what the jacket copy says. --- Reviewed by Robert Finn
Rating:
Summary: First Rate American History
Review: This book totally changed my view of early American history. Brilliant writing and research show the huge impact of the Dutch on the making of this country and bring the Dutch New Netherland colony alive. From now on Van Der Donck will be know as the other founding father.
Rating:
Summary: Solid History
Review: This is a good solid history of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, now known as New York. Mr. Shorto relates that there has been little reported on this history because of America's Anglophilic history and a lack of documentary history. Several years ago volumes of documents were found and they are now being translated in the archives of the NY State Library. It is this recently unearthed and translated documentation that enabled Mr. Shorto to write this book.
The history is interesting and Mr. Shorto does well with what he has. Unfortunately, there are gaps, presumably attributable to the dearth of documents. For instance, the author goes on for pages and chapters about how Van der Donck is working so hard to get a representative government into Manhattan. He is then completely thwarted by the Dutch government. A few pages later, the history recommences a few years thereafter and there is a representative government although Van der Donck is still held in disregard by the powers that be.
Other than the unavoidable gaps, another criticism is that Mr. Shorto redundantly posits that New York/Netherlands was the first place in the colonies and the globe to be truly tolerant. He contrasts this equally constantly with the English colonies in Massachusetts and Virginia that were founded as intolerant theocracies. Having related this throughout the book, he then devoted most of his conclusionary chapter to reiterating it.
Although Mr. Shorto does well relating the Dutch-English alliance and then rivalry, he does give a bit of a short shrift to their intense rivalry in the East Indies, perhaps giving an inordinate amount of credit to New Netherlands for their wars.
All that criticism aside, it should be stressed that this is a good and interesting history about a very little known aspect of American history. Mr. Shorto does bring into focus that NY was truly the original melting pot and its tolerance carried(s) through hundreds of years after its founding. The author's love for his subject certainly came through. This is worth the time.
Rating:
Summary: The unbelievable Dutch Contributution to America
Review: Up to now the preponderant view held by many historians is that Dutch contribution to American history and particularly to that of New York has been one of irrelevancy. As we no doubt realize, the winners write history, and unfortunately, whatever the losers may have contributed, it seems to be lost or forgotten in the shuffle. Fortunately, during the past thirty years and thanks to the translation of many Dutch records that have been recently discovered pertaining to the early colony of New Netherlands, a different picture has emerged.
It is this new perspective that author Russell Shorto has vividly and brilliantly captured in his latest gem of a book entitled, The Island at the Center of the World. Shorto devotes considerable ink in defending his thesis that the success of Manhattan as a commercial center, or New York, as it was renamed after the British takeover, did not begin with the English but rather had very deep roots in the early Dutch community. It was in fact in the late 1640s that the city of New Amsterdam under Dutch rule began its rise to become North American's shipping hub.
Furthermore, one of the key actors who played a pivotal role in the community was, up to now, a long forgotten visionary, Adriaen van der Donck, who often found himself, locked in a power- struggle with Peter Stuyvesant. The latter has always been more recognizable than the former, particularly due to the fact that it was he who surrendered the Dutch colony to the British. What was very little publicized up to now was that van der Donck had being heavily influenced by the more progressive thinking of some of Europe's most enlightened thinkers as Descartes, Grotius, and Spinoza. It is the freedoms espoused by these thinkers that van der Donck believed in. Eventually, they would find root in the Dutch colony, ultimately becoming the foundation of many of the democratic principles forming the basis of the American cultural, economic and sociological psyche.
On the other hand, Stuyvesant, who lacked the same formal education as van der Donck, was stuck in his old tyrannical concepts and narrow- minded prejudices, which effect was to stifle the aspirations of the inhabitants of the Dutch colony. It is fortunate for the USA that the theories and beliefs of van der Donck won out. As a side note and to indicate the extent of the Dutch influence on American culture, Shorto also reveals such interesting tidbits as what settlers emigrating to the Dutch colony would bring along with them, the derivation of words such as cookies, cole slaw and Santa Claus, that can all trace their roots to the Dutch colony of New Netherlands.
We also have an overview and some fascinating insights as to what actually transpired between the Dutch and the English at the time the latter took possession of New Nederland. Shorto's animated characterizations of individuals and events is consistently enlightening entertaining, informative and balanced, all of which make for a powerful analysis of events that have had an unbelievable influence on American culture, political and economic institutions.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Story Poorly Told
Review: What a missed opportunity! With the use of recently revealed material Shorto, with much publicity, presents us with what is billed as a new and exciting history of early Dutch settlement in America. The main problem is that it is not popular history, but historical fiction. In an effort to create a narrative story, Shorto informs us of dialogue, weather, the color of the sky, and specifics of peoples' clothes in specific circumstances throughout, information totally a creation of the author's imagination. One is tempted to say that the work is direly in need of an editor to clean up the mis-spellings, incorrect use of pronouns, clumsy repetitions, etc., but even that would not solve the main problem with this book: the author has taken new and fascinating information and made it boring.
My only hope is that there is room for another effort to present this material to us, one which does justice to the material and our intelligence. This book does neither.
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