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

The 1664 deal that transferred power from the Dutch to the English in what is now New York City was an inventive act that would be foundational to the metropolis to come, according to historian Shorto’s revelatory sequel to The Island at the Center of the World. When Richard Nicolls, the Englishman tasked with capturing New Amsterdam, came up against Peter Stuyvesant, the director-general of the Dutch enclave, the two men astonishingly disobeyed orders from their respective empires to fight and instead negotiated peacefully. Long considered merely a sign of Dutch decline, Shorto sees more to the story of the handover: the contrarian Nicolls and the abrasive Stuyvesant were not only the right men at the right time—both constitutionally suited to ignore authority—but also a kind of new man brought into being by the very empires that had molded them. Agents of imperial capitalism, they were more interested in business than war: the deal preserved and expanded the unique system of free enterprise that had been brewing on the tiny island, with unprecedented freedom of religion and property guaranteed by Nicolls for residents of the already famously business-friendly and pluralistic city. (The earlier Dutch theft of Manhattan from the Wampanoag, Shorto suggests, also presaged another uniquely American form of dealmaking—the scam.) Shorto’s storytelling is wry and accomplished, transforming a campaign of letter-writing and procedural legerdemain into a brisk and amusing saga. Readers will be wowed. (Mar.)