Reading list · 10 books

Dutch and colonial New York

Books on New Amsterdam, slavery in the colony, the Stamp Act, the Revolution and the first president in the city.

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The history

The Island at the Center of the World (opens Bookshop.org)

The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

Russell Shorto · 2004

Shorto draws on the translated Dutch colonial records to reconstruct New Amsterdam under Peter Stuyvesant, and argues that its tolerant, commercial culture shaped the country.
The history

Mannahatta (opens Bookshop.org)

A Natural History of New York City

Eric W. Sanderson · 2009

Sanderson and the Wildlife Conservation Society's Mannahatta Project rebuild the island Henry Hudson saw in 1609, with its streams, forests, wetlands and animals, and lay them over today's streets.
The history

New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty (opens Bookshop.org)

Evan Haefeli · 2012

Haefeli examines how the Dutch colony handled Quakers, Jews and Lutherans, including the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance, and how that record fed later ideas of religious freedom.
The history

New York Burning (opens Bookshop.org)

Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan

Jill Lepore · 2005

Lepore reconstructs the fires and trials of 1741, when white New Yorkers accused enslaved people of plotting to burn the city and put dozens of them to death.
The history

In the Shadow of Slavery (opens Bookshop.org)

African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863

Leslie M. Harris · 2003

Harris traces Black New Yorkers from the Dutch period to the Draft Riots, through enslavement, gradual emancipation, and the churches and neighborhoods they built.
The history

Slavery in New York (opens Bookshop.org)

Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris · 2005

Essays published with a New-York Historical Society exhibition follow slavery in the city from the Dutch era through emancipation in 1827, and its economic reach.
The history

The Stamp Act Crisis (opens Bookshop.org)

Prologue to Revolution

Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan · 1953

The Morgans trace colonial resistance to the 1765 tax, including the Stamp Act Congress that met in New York City and the riots that greeted the stamps.
The history

1776 (opens Bookshop.org)

David McCullough · 2005

McCullough tracks the year of the Declaration from the Siege of Boston through the Battle of Brooklyn and Washington's retreat across New York and New Jersey, with letters and diaries from both armies.
The history

Forgotten Patriots (opens Bookshop.org)

The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War

Edwin G. Burrows · 2008

Burrows documents the British prison ships and jails in occupied New York, where thousands of American captives died, and what happened to the survivors.
The history

Washington (opens Bookshop.org)

A Life

Ron Chernow · 2010

Chernow's life of Washington includes the first presidency in New York and the 1789 inauguration at Federal Hall. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.