In this talk, Russell Shorto revisits the Dutch origins of New York through his landmark book The Island at the Center of the World and his new work Taking Manhattan, which tells the dramatic story of the English takeover of New Netherland in 1664. Together, the books trace how a small Dutch colony on Manhattan and across the Hudson in today’s New Jersey helped shape the culture, politics, and commercial ethos of the region that became New York.

Russell Shorto is the author of eight books of narrative history, including the international bestseller The Island at the Center of the World; Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City; and, most recently, Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America. He is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New York Historical and Senior Scholar at the New Netherland Institute. In 2018 he was inducted into the New York…