AMSTERDAM: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

Despite its relative size, Amsterdam 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, the book will bring to life its sights and smells, politics and people as the author weaves in his own experiences of his adopted home. His is a delightful and engaging story of the city from the building of the first canals in the 1300s and concentrating on two significant periods - the late 1500s to the mid 1600s - and then from WWII to the present. Follow through the brutal struggle for Dutch independence, its golden age as the capital of a vast empire, to its complex present at which its cherished ideals are being questioned anew. 17th century Amsterdam was the well spring of liberalism and today it still takes that individual freedom very seriously. The civic model is based on the rule of law, low flat taxes, open immigration, private property rights, freedom of religion, self-government, and a strong emphasis on the individual, far more than just shopping, prostitution, cannabis, parties and bikes. Shorto is once again revealed as 'a passionate and persuasive historian of culture and ideas.' Colour and black and white photos, much hailed on publication. 405pp in paperback.