Russell Shorto

Russell Shorto is a senior scholar at the New Netherland Institute and contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. His best-selling history of the Dutch in New York, The Island at the Center of the World, was published in 2004.

Shorto's recent book, Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom, was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize, and excerpted in the Fall 2019 issue.

For several years, Shorto was director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam, and in 2013 published Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City

His other books include Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason, Gospel Truth: On the Trail of the Historical Jesus, and Saints and Madmen: How Science Got Religion.

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Russell

Shorto

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Revolution Song, Fall 2019 - George Washington Prize Books | Vol. 64, No. 5

The American War for Independence was part of an international trend -- a new focus on the individual led people to new insights, new proclamations and new assertions of rights.

New Amsterdam Becomes New York, Winter 2010 | Vol. 59, No. 4

The British seize Manhattan from the Dutch—and alter the trajectory of North American history

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