Books of New York's Dutch Era
The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto
In its title, Russell Shorto's history might capture how modern-day New Yorkers view their city, but he's giving us an enlightening romp through our Dutch past.
City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling
Beverly Swerling's 2001 novel follows generations of a New York medical family from Dutch days through the arrival of George Washington after the Revolutionary War.
New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America by Jaap Jacob
Dutch scholar Jaap Jacobs's mammoth treatise for serious historians and very interested lay people.
The Embarrassment of Riches by Simon Schama
Simon Schama's lively interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age of the 17th Century, delightfully brought to life with illustrations of hundreds of Dutch paintings.
Plain Lives in a Golden Age by A. Th. van Deursen
A. Th. van Deursen is not as exhaustive as Schama but he presents a lively picture of how ordinary people lived during the Netherlands' Golden Age.
New Netherland in a Nutshell by Firth Fabend
A concise illustrated history of the Dutch Colony pu out by the New Netherland Institute
The Edge of New Netherland by Len Tantillo
Artist Len Tantillo's illustrated study of the Dutch and the Swedes vied for control of the Delaware River during the days of New Netherland, also by the New Netherland Institute.
The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan by Bill Greer
I can't resist a plug for my own book, a story of New Amsterdam by the sharpest observer of Manhattan society since Dutchmen bought the island, Mevrouw Jackie Lambert.
Bill's Books
The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan
A Novel of New Amsterdam by Bill Greer
A "romp through the history of New Netherland that would surely have Petrus Stuyvesant complaining about the riot transpiring between its pages ... Readers are guaranteed a genuine adventure that will evoke the full range of human emotions. Once begun, they can expect to experience that rare difficulty in putting down a book before they have finished."
-- de Halve Maen, Journal of the Holland Society of New York
About the Book
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A DIRTY YEAR
Sex, Suffrage & Scandal in Gilded Age New York
A nonfiction narrative of 1872 New York, a city convulsing with social upheaval and sexual revolution and beset with all the excitement and challenges a moment of transformation brings.
From Chicago Review Press, 2020
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