'The story of a great city that has shaped the soul of the world. Masterful reporting, vivid history - the past and present are equally alive in this book' James Gleick, author of The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood 'Shorto's fine portraits of individuals are in the Amsterdam tradition, and he has an Amsterdammer's feel for this backwater town that remains the world's laboratory of liberalism' Financial Times In this ever-surprising and effortlessly erudite portrait, Russell Shorto traces the idiosyncratic evolution of Amsterdam and examines its role as the font of liberalism. Weaving in his own experiences of his adopted home, he delivers a delightful and intellectually engaging story of the city from the building of the first canals in the 1300s through its brutal struggle for independence and its golden age as a vast empire, to its complex present in which its cherished ideals are being questioned anew. 'Shorto entertainingly takes the reader through the grandeurs and miseries of Amsterdam's rise to power . Amsterdam's liberalism is important in itself, but also because it was exported, not just to North America but also, through the Glorious Revolution, to Britain and its empire, and to the rest of Europe through the writings of Spinoza . Shorto is an excellent storyteller and rootler of strange facts' Guardian 'An often brilliant - and always enjoyable - investigation of liberalism's Dutch roots. Shorto is once again revealed as a passionate and persuasive historian of culture and ideas' Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland.