Description

Amsterdam is not just any city. Despite its relative size it 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, Amsterdam will bring the place to life: its sights and smells; its politics and people. Concentrating on two significant periods – the late 1500s to the mid 1600s and then from the Second World War to the present, Russell Shorto s masterful biography looks at Amsterdam s central preoccupations. Just as fin-de-siecle Vienna was the birthplace of psychoanalysis, seventeenth century Amsterdam was the wellspring of liberalism, and today it is still a city that takes individual freedom very seriously. A wonderfully evocative book that takes Amsterdam s dramatic past and present and populates it with a whole host of colourful characters, Amsterdam is the definitive book on this great city.

• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 1.42 x 7.76 inches