Product Description

It was situated on a perfect natural harbour at the mouth of a great river leading into a huge new land. Manhattan Island was to grow into the most powerful city in the most powerful country in the world. THE ISLAND AT THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD returns to the origins of New York's extraordinary history. It tells how a wilderness populated only by wolves and native tribes became the melting pot from which developed the free-trade, multi-cultural and upwardly-mobile spirit of New York that in turn would shape the whole American nation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #135287 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 329 pages

Review
" 'Rattlingly well-told... a terrific popular history about a past that beautifully illuminates the present' - Sunday Times 'Deserves to be a bestseller...narratively irresistible, intellectually provocative, historically invaluable' - Guardian 'A landmark book...Reads like a thriller...[like] the similarly ground-breaking Longitude' - The Times 'A great story...I was completely convinced' - Daily Telegraph"

Sunday Times
'Rattlingly well-told tale ... a terrific popular history about a past that beautifully illuminates the present.'

Literary Review
'More like a novel than a history...the characters and the colony are brought to life in an absorbing, enjoyable book.'

Customer Reviews

Why Manhattan is so Different
This is a truly stunning book; it is a proper history book which reads like a best selling novel. The author's gift is to conduct fantastically thorough research on 17th century Dutch records, and then bring the whole thing to life with a truly modern explanation of why Manhattan came to be the centre of the world. The Dutch story of the founding of Manhattan has long been waiting to be told and this book gives it its proper place. The extraordinary characters of the 17th century are brought to life and seem to walk again along the cobbled streets of Amsterdam, Leiden and the Hague, and the dirt roads of Manhattan Island. No wonder the English recognised the strategic importance of the place, once they realised the significance of what the Dutch were doing in building a trading empire. There is a tendency to think that in the 17th century, with communications being poor, events happened in a random fashion. The genius of this account is to show that that is not so; all of the great events of the time, and all of its great characters, were interlinked, and all combined to provide the basis for the foundation of the capital of the world : Manhattan ! This is a fantastically good book !

Little known history, told well
The murky history of the Dutch colony in Manhattan is wonderfully brought to life in Shorto's book. Detailed, yet not too heavy, it is the type of history that's easy to read, being written in a narritive, or story-like style. Add to that the fact that the subject is one of the world's most recognised cities and that the history of the Dutch colony is little known to most readers, it's full of suprises. Well worth reading

Wonderful book
excellent witty and well researched book dealing with the dutch origins of the big "A". It really brings the characters to life and you can sense the authors love for his own city. Excellent maps as well. Id recommend as a summer beach or plane read as well as if you are studying the subject.