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Amsterdam

A History of the World's Most Liberal City
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( 5,716 ratings, 750 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Amsterdam by Russell Shorto offers a captivating exploration of the city's influential role in shaping modern society. The book delves into Amsterdam's history, from its humble beginnings to its rise as a centre of trade and culture, highlighting its contributions to ideas of individual freedom, tolerance, and democracy. Through rich storytelling, Shorto paints a portrait of a city that has continually embraced progress and innovation.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you're fascinated by how Amsterdam's rich history of trade, art, and innovation has shaped modern society. The narrative blends the personal and the historical, showcasing the city's role in the evolution of democracy and capitalism, which may appeal to those interested in the intersections of history, politics, and culture.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

This is the first 'biography' of the city of Amsterdam - in the same vein as Peter Ackroyd's London.

This is the first 'biography' of the city of Amsterdam - in the same vein as Peter Ackroyd's London.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

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.

Focusing 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 examines Amsterdam's central preoccupations. Just as fin-de-siècle Vienna was the birthplace of psychoanalysis, seventeenth-century Amsterdam was the wellspring of liberalism, and today it remains 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.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Amsterdam by Russell Shorto is generally praised for its engaging and comprehensive exploration of the city's history and its global influence. Reviewers often highlight Shorto's ability to weave together historical events with cultural insights, offering a vivid portrayal of Amsterdam’s development. The narrative's depth and the author's storytelling style are frequently commended, making the book both an educational and enjoyable read.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780349000022

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 08 May 2014

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Abacus

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 27.0mm

Width: 129.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 370g

Pages: 416

About the Author

Russell Shorto is an American author, historian and journalist. His books have been published in nine languages and he is the contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and the director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam.

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