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Island at the Center of the World (Part 2) - Russell Shorto (CD)
Title: Title: Island at the Center of the World (Part 2) Author: Russell Shorto Genre: History Format: CD, 5 CDs (Unabridged) Synopsis: In an account that blends a novelist's grasp of storytelling with cutting-edge scholarship, The Island at the Center of the World strips Manhattan of its asphalt and brings us back to a wilderness island. Manhattan was populated by wolves and bears which became a prize in the global power struggle between the English and the Dutch. Russell Shorto shows that America's founding was not the work of English settlers alone, but rather a result of two seventeenth century powers--Amsterdam and England. It was Amsterdam's most liberal city with an unusual policy of tolerance and a polyglot society dedicated to free trade. Manhattan became the model for the city of New Amsterdam. While the Puritans of New England were founding a society based on intolerance, the Dutch created a free-trade, upwardly-mobile melting pot that would help shape not only New York but America. The men and women who played a part in Manhattan's founding range from the philosopher Rene Descartes to James the Duke of York. At the heart of the story is a bitter power struggle between two men: Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director fo the Dutch colony, and a forgotten American hero named Adriaen van der Donck, a maverick, liberal-minded lawyer whose brilliant political gamesmanship, commitment to individual freedom, and exuberant love of his new country would have a lasting impact on the history of this nation. Review: Publishers Weekly Mining a trove of recently translated 17th-century records of New Netherland, Shorto reconstructs, in fascinating detail, the little-told story behind the Dutch settlement and its capital, Manhattan. In it, listeners meet a wide cast of characters, from early governors Peter Minuit and Peter Stuyvesant to princes, explorers, smugglers, settlers, Indians, Puritans, prostitutes and slaves. It's hard to imagine any narrator's voice remaining fresh and compelling through 15 hours of sweeping historical narrative, but Ganser comes close. In a voice imbued with robustness, Ganser juggles the delivery not only of characters, but of cultures, eras, lexicons and the occasionally intrusive persona of the author. These various layers are rendered, for the most part, in authentic fashion. Shorto's prose, however, can be overwrought and, because the narrative is built on volumes of oft-arcane legal documents, he is partial to listing, which overwhelms the ear. In addition, with so dense a narrative terrain, many listeners will lament the audiobook's lack of maps and other illustrations. But these are mostly minor quibbles when measured against the grand scope of Shorto's fascinating history and Ganser's admirable performance. Based on the Doubleday hardcover (Forecasts, Feb. 9). (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.