Amsterdam
A History of the World's Most Liberal City
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Narrated by:
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Russell Shorto
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By:
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Russell Shorto
About this listen
An endlessly entertaining portrait of the city of Amsterdam and the ideas that make it unique, by the author of the acclaimed Island at the Center of the World
Tourists know Amsterdam as a picturesque city of low-slung brick houses lining tidy canals; student travelers know it for its legal brothels and hash bars; art lovers know it for Rembrandt's glorious portraits.
But the deeper history of Amsterdam, what makes it one of the most fascinating places on Earth, is bound up in its unique geography - the constant battle of its citizens to keep the sea at bay and the democratic philosophy that this enduring struggle fostered. Amsterdam is the font of liberalism, in both its senses. Tolerance for free thinking and free love make it a place where, in the words of one of its mayors, "craziness is a value". But the city also fostered the deeper meaning of liberalism, one that profoundly influenced America: political and economic freedom. Amsterdam was home not only to religious dissidents and radical thinkers but to the world's first great global corporation.
In this effortlessly erudite account, Russell Shorto traces the idiosyncratic evolution of Amsterdam, showing how such disparate elements as herring anatomy, naked Anabaptists parading through the streets, and an intimate gathering in a 16th-century wine-tasting room had a profound effect on Dutch - and world - history. Weaving in his own experiences of his adopted home, Shorto provides an ever-surprising, intellectually engaging story of Amsterdam from the building of its first canals in the 1300s, through its brutal struggle for independence, its golden age as a vast empire, to its complex present in which its cherished ideals of liberalism are under siege.
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- Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In Bucharest, Romania's capital, Kaplan discovered that few Westerners were reporting on the country - one of the darkest corners of Europe during the Cold War. In an intense and cinematic travelogue, Kaplan explores the history and culture of the only country in the West where the leading intellectuals have been right-wing rather than left-wing; a country that gave rise to the dictator Ion Antonescu, Hitler's chief foreign accomplice during WWII; a country where the Latin West mixes with the Greek East, producing a fascinating fusion of cultures.
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Wrestling with History
- By David on 03-07-16
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Fracture
- Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
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When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell-shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: The old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.
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Lots of good trivia information
- By Jean on 07-23-15
By: Philipp Blom
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A History of Future Cities
- By: Daniel Brook
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?
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Engaging and Memorable
- By Marcus Vorwaller on 04-15-14
By: Daniel Brook
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We Don't Know Ourselves
- A Personal History of Modern Ireland
- By: Fintan O'Toole
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
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In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism.
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Relentlessly Negative
- By John on 06-02-22
By: Fintan O'Toole
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Marx's General
- The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels
- By: Tristram Hunt
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
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Friedrich Engels is one of the most intriguing and contradictory figures of the 19th century. Born to a prosperous Prussian mercantile family, he spent his life working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable upper-middle-class existence of a Victorian gentleman.
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Not many choices here anyways.
- By Prof. Neil Larsen on 02-16-13
By: Tristram Hunt
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Vermeer's Hat
- The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World
- By: Timothy Brook
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
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A Vermeer painting shows a military officer in a Dutch sitting room, talking to a laughing girl. In another canvas, fruit spills from a blue-and-white porcelain bowl. Familiar images that captivate us with their beauty--but as Timothy Brook shows us, these intimate pictures actually give us a remarkable view of an expanding world.
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A wonderful book
- By Acteon on 07-09-14
By: Timothy Brook
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One Nation, Under Gods
- A New American History
- By: Peter Manseau
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 17 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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At the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian vantage point, Peter Manseau proves that what really happened is worth a close, fresh look.
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Tapestry of different pieces makes for a whole
- By Gary on 03-23-15
By: Peter Manseau
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Indelible City
- Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong
- By: Louisa Lim
- Narrated by: Louisa Lim
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Hong Kong has long been dominated by competing myths: to Britain, a “barren rock” with no appreciable history; to China, a part of Chinese soil from time immemorial, at last returned to the ancestral fold. For decades, Hong Kong’s history was simply not taught, especially to Hong Kongers, obscuring its origins as a place of refuge and rebellion.
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Visceral History
- By Amazon Customer on 11-21-23
By: Louisa Lim
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The Novel of the Century
- The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables
- By: David Bellos
- Narrated by: David Bellos
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Putting a century of scholarship on one of the world's most enduring popular novels into accessible, narrative form, this new approach to a classic of world literature is written for a wide general audience. Packed full of information about the book's origins and later career on stage and screen, The Novel of the Century brings to life the extraordinary story of how Victor Hugo managed to write his novel of the downtrodden despite a revolution, a coup d'etat, and political exile.
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how hard to write a book
- By James Grohs on 08-06-24
By: David Bellos
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Millennium
- From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed over a Thousand Years
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In Millennium, best-selling historian Ian Mortimer takes the listener on a whirlwind tour of the last 10 centuries of Western history. It is a journey into a past vividly brought to life and bursting with ideas, that pits one century against another in his quest to measure which century saw the greatest change. We journey from a time when there was a fair chance of your village being burned to the ground by invaders - and dried human dung was a recommended cure for cancer - to a world in which explorers sailed into the unknown and civilizations came into conflict.
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Bad ending - literally
- By John Gordon on 12-14-16
By: Ian Mortimer
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Marred by the errors in the modern section
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Gotham
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In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. The events and people who crowd this audiobook guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America....
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THANK YOU!!!!!
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What listeners say about Amsterdam
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Patrice
- 04-09-16
Engaging, accessible, intelligent
Both engaging and accessible, the author's first person style belies the complexity of this extensive analysis of the role of Amsterdam in the history of the Western world.
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2 people found this helpful
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- JFS
- 07-24-23
Amsterdam
The richness of the story is told here in the professor’s full historical style. An amazing history.
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- Jean
- 02-04-24
Very, very interesting
I’m becoming interested in just about any Russell Shorto writes or narrates. Thank you! Always interesting and well researched and delivered.
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- karl
- 08-29-16
Scope
If your interested in Amsterdam history, this is a narrative with great scope, with or without the liberal argument.
I've listened to it twice now. It leaves me hungry for more detail on the Dutch state system.
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1 person found this helpful
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- O Woods
- 08-10-16
Great book on Amsterdam
I strongly recommend this book to gain an understanding of the city of Amsterdam and in return the making of the U.S.
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- Nat
- 10-13-23
Enhanced my trip to Amsterdam
I listened to this book both before and after my trip to Amsterdam. It would have been great just for all the information in it, but it is so well written too!
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- Daniel D.
- 08-02-24
easy to follow, informative, informal
informative, though not written by a historian, is easy to grasp and good coverage. contains author observations and insights of dutch culture of today.
totally recommend.
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- Whit B
- 05-12-14
Worth Reading - Highly Recommended
Any additional comments?
This book is a fascinating history of Amsterdam and its origins as well as its impact on the world.
The book was very well structured - there was a fluid and ordered chronological progression from its inception to current day, but it was built on specific and more concise anecdotal clips.
It covered:
- The formation of Amsterdam, and its origins as a religious pilgrimage site
- Its role in the India Trading Companies
- The first ever stock market
- Its role as the first colonizers of New York
- Its prominent artists such as Rembrandt & Van Gogh
- Its involvement in World War II - Anne Frank's place of birth
- And of course, first place to legalize gay marriage, prostitution, marijuana etc.
Overall it did a very good job of highlighting Amsterdam's pioneering of progressive ideas including religious/cultural/racial tolerance, separation of church and state, liberalism (as opposed to a monarchy), and its open minded environment that fostered the development of these concepts.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Retired Sailor
- 04-10-17
Interesting Intro to Amsterdam
The author presented an interesting history of the "world's most liberal city". After listening to the reading I have a new understanding of the term Liberal and what that term means to the Dutch. He provides a solid story of Amsterdam through the 1950s. I think his description of the 1960s through the end timeline in his book became a little colored by the author's own political views. Still, for me the book met my goal. In preparation of a trip to the city I wanted to learn about the city's history and what makes Amsterdam unique. The book did that
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- Merry
- 07-04-16
Fascinating in Breath and Depth
I first started this book cramming for a family trip to Amsterdam but could not stop listening to it. The amount of information in it is unbelievable. It is written so well you might think you have your own personal tour guide to the city who can bring in the political, social, scientific and moral histories into one story with a sprinkling of quirky details. This book is anything but a dry, information book on the city. It captivated me and got me to think about what forces shape a city, country and its people.
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