Riveting.... Filled with new knowledge, eloquent prose, and international intrigue, Russell Shorto's history will take your breath away.--Tiya Miles, National Book Award winner and author of Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People

This vivid history chronicles England's 'taking' of New Amsterdam from the Dutch, in 1664. Shorto, however, argues that it was the Dutch, not the English, who sowed the seeds of the multiethnic, religiously tolerant, and unabashedly capitalistic metropolis that would emerge as New York.-- "The New Yorker"

Russell Shorto has heroically recovered pulsing, pluralistic New Amsterdam, offering up the seventeenth century transfer of power as it actually occurred. Best of all, Shorto himself feels everywhere present in these spirited, revelatory pages.--Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Revolutionary

Shorto tells the story beautifully, and makes a compelling case for its enduring importance.--Jacob Goldstein "New York Times"

Mr. Shorto...[tells] backstories in vivid and sometimes creative detail.--D.G. Hart "Wall Street Journal"

Fascinating.... [Shorto's] vivid account emphasizes New York's roots in pluralism and a capitalist ethos while also tracing the roles of slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans in the city's founding.-- "Christian Science Monitor"

A masterful account of the international struggle for control of 17th-century Manhattan, a fascinating, often overlooked saga.... Packed with intrigue and fascinating subplots.... A bracing narrative of the international standoff that birthed America's biggest city.--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

[Taking Manhattan is ]Shorto's revelatory sequel to The Island at the Center of the World.... Readers will be wowed.--Publishers Weekly, starred review

Nobody understands the origins of New York City better than historian Russell Shorto. Taking Manhattan brilliantly illuminates how a seventeenth-century Dutch enclave of 1,500 residents, on acreage swindled from Native Americans, rose to become the most cosmopolitan New World port in the seventeenth century and beyond. Shorto, a detail-driven scholar, seamlessly weaves together secondary literature with newly translated Dutch documents to astonishing effect. This narrative is the historiographical Rosetta Stone of how New York City was born. With keen exactitude, Shorto explains how the Atlantic slave trade was an essential component of the building of New York City. As both a work of American and European history Taking Manhattan soars!--Douglas Brinkley, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and professor of history at Rice University, author of Rightful Heritage

More than any other person, Russell Shorto rescued New Amsterdam from historic obscurity. Shorto is a great researcher and a persuasive storyteller.--Kenneth T. Jackson, Barzun Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University

In this fascinating book, Russell Shorto unravels the DNA inside New York. I thought I knew New York, but it opened my eyes to the city and its rich history.--Fareed Zakaria, author of Age of Revolutions

Taking Manhattan picks up where The Island at the Center of the World leaves off. Shorto's masterful narrative brings the much-neglected stories of Native Americans and African Americans into a heady stew that is our real founding story.--Kevin Baker, author of The New York Game

Here is the whirligig of history, which Shorto captures vividly in this well-researched, well-written, sprightly book. Anyone interested in what leads to or can forestall wars of empire will find Taking Manhattan a rewarding, instructive read.--Edward Short "New World"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2026-05-26

Length: 416 pages