First off, I apologize for the long lapse between posts. I've been extraordinarily busy with work and play, and have not found time to sit down to begin blogging about The Island at the Center of the World. I hope that, over the next few days when I'm in Baltimore, I'll be able to find a few hours to sit down here and there to update you on the progress I've made in the book. Trust me, you'll want to check back often, because this book is off the hook.
Before I begin with an initial background on what this book is about, I'd like to share with you an anecdote from my yester years. I was eleven when I started at St. Paul's School for Girls. I received a pretty hefty packet of summer assignments a few days after I graduated from fifth grade, and one of those assignments was to make a brochure for a town in colonial America. I wanted so badly to impress my new classmates (some of whom I hoped would look past the braces, glasses, and acne and see me for the cool, hip kid that I was), so I worked really hard on this project. For whatever reason, I equated a cool American History class assignment with having lots of friends- needless to say I can share with you now that I was quickly labeled a nerd. (Never fear- I made some amazing friends that I still keep in touch with today - but my little eleven year-old self was shocked that a cool history project did NOT equal lots of friends).
Well, I chose to do my history project, a travel brochure, on New Amsterdam. See, my friends, I was born in Manhattan. Mt. Sinai Hospital, to be exact, in the middle of a huge thunderstorm, at exactly 4 p.m. But I digress. I was proud of my birthplace and where I grew up (until I moved to MD when I was seven), and I wanted to share with my new classmates the fact that I was a worldly, unique gal whom they should all immediately be-friend. Well, I went all out on this project, and received an A++!! I learned about the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, and their relatively productive relationships with the Native Americans- until the English beat their butts and the Dutch lost control of what would become what and some might say the most powerful and important city in the world.
That is, in a nutshell, what The Island at the Center of the World, is all about. You might say the author, Russell Shorto, stole his idea from my sixth grade travel brochure, but I'll go ahead and give him this one. Shorto, a writer whose sentences are both intelligent, educating, and freaking hilarious, has based the entire 325-page book on documents that have been largely ignored since the British took control of the island. These documents, all primary sources comprising of diary entries, letters to stock holders, and observations of explorations, were found in the basement of some building or another, written in a largely extinct form of Dutch, and are in the process of being translated by a Dr. Gehrig. They describe a colony that was formed by one of the most powerful colonial companies of the age: the Dutch West India Trading Company. The colony, New Amsterdam, and it's subsequent outposts, were bastions of cultural inclusion and freedom of expression, much like the country from whence they were founded. Native American relations were not strained; in fact, the colony probably survived and thrived because of the strong relations with the Native American tribes in the area. In short, it was everything that New England and Virginia (the two other culturally and historically relevant colonies) were not. But more on that later.
I'm almost halfway through the book now, but I need to break up my posts chapter by chapter. The first installment is about Henry Hudson: a man who inevitably paved the way to the colonization of the west of America. Check back soon for that post.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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