CBH Talk | Russell Shorto and Andrea Mosterman Discuss “Taking Manhattan”
Join us for an evening with master storyteller and historian Russell Shorto as he discusses his latest book, Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America. Building on his acclaimed The Island at the Center of the World, Shorto delves into the fascinating origins of New York City, tracing how a 17th-century Dutch enclave of just 1,500 residents—established on land taken from Native Americans—grew into the most cosmopolitan port of the New World. In this compelling narrative, he brings long-overlooked Native American and African American stories to the forefront, offering a richer, more complex account of America's true founding. The conversation is led by historian Andrea Mosterman, author of Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York.
Participants
Russell Shorto, author of the bestsellers Smalltime, Revolution Song, Amsterdam, and The Island at the Center of the World, is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New York Historical. He lives in Maryland.
Andrea Mosterman is associate professor in Atlantic History and Joseph Tregle Professor in Early American History at the University of New Orleans. She studies slavery and the slave trade in the Dutch Atlantic world. Her book Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York (Cornell University Press, October 2021) has won the 2020 Hendricks Award for best book-length manuscript relating to New Netherland and the Dutch colonial experience. She currently researches the voyage of the Dutch slave ship the Gideon and the seventeenth-century Dutch Atlantic slave trade with North America.
Shorto image courtesy of Cizzy Watson. Mosterman image courtesy of Julie Verlinden.
This program is offered in partnership with The Guides Association of New York City.
