'Tis commonly said this city is very like Venice,' a widely
travelled English visitor wrote of Amsterdam towards the end of the
17th century. 'For my part I believe Amsterdam to be much
superior.' In this absorbing book, one of Holland's best-known
journalists has traced the history of this captivating city and its
people from its earliest days as a primitive settlement amidst a
boggy marshland full of reeds and alder thickets. The story passes
through the times of the prosperous 16th-century merchant depicted
in a painting by Jacobszoon, sitting in his counting house with the
profits of his trade on the table before him, to the horrors of the
war and the fearful 'Hunger Winter' of 1945 when the empty houses
of tens of thousands of deported Jews were plundered for firewood
and 1600 Amsterdammers died of starvation in a single month.
(Kirkus UK)
Cosmopolitan, stylish, decadent, Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture but also a city of civil wars, uprisings and bloody religious purges. In his book, a journey through the turbulent history of one of Europe’s cultural capitals, Geert Mak shows his eye for the unexpected and the bizarre. A medieval lady’s shoe unearthed during building work; a Rembrandt sketch of a hanged girl; graffiti on the side of a grand house, foretelling the city’s doom, said to have been applied by a deranged burgomaster in his own blood. Using diaries and eyewitness accounts, Mak paints a vivid portrait of the city through the centuries: its bustling harbour, its grand houses, its slums, its fabled wealth, the catastrophic winters, bloody insurrections, and the evolution of the mentality that shaped it. He has produced an original and readable social history and an engaging alternative travel guide.
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