Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America

Shorto, Russell

ISBN 10: 0393881164 / ISBN 13: 9780393881165

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2025

About this Item

2025. 1st Edition. hardcover. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780393881165

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393881164
• ISBN 13: 9780393881165
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Best Book of 2025

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

The author of The Island at the Center of the World offers up a thrilling narrative of how New York―that brash, bold, archetypal city―came to be.

In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general.

Bristling with vibrant characters, Taking Manhattan reveals the founding of New York to be an invention, the result of creative negotiations that would blend the multiethnic, capitalistic society of New Amsterdam with the power of the rising English empire. But the birth of what might be termed the first modern city is also a story of the brutal dispossession of Native Americans and of the roots of American slavery. The book draws from newly translated materials and illuminates neglected histories―of religious refugees, Indigenous tribes, and free and enslaved Africans.

Taking Manhattan tells the riveting story of the birth of New York City as a center of capitalism and pluralism, a foundation from which America would rise. It also shows how the paradox of New York’s origins―boundless opportunity coupled with subjugation and displacement―reflects America’s promise and failure to this day. Russell Shorto, whose work has been described as “astonishing” (New York Times) and “literary alchemy” (Chicago Tribune), has once again mined archival sources to offer a vibrant tale and a fresh and trenchant argument about American beginnings.

29 images, 2 maps

About the Author

Russell Shorto is the best-selling author of eight books, including Smalltime, Revolution Song, Amsterdam, and The Island at the Center of the World. He is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New York Historical and senior scholar at the New Netherland Institute.