Amsterdam

Amsterdam is not just any city. Despite its relative size it hasstood alongside its larger cousins - Paris, London, Berlin - andhas influenced the modern world to a degree that few other citieshave. Sweeping across the city's colourful thousand year history, Amsterdam will bring the place to life: its sights and smells; itspolitics and people. Concentrating on two significant periods - thelate 1500s to the mid 1600s and then from the Second World War tothe present, Russell Shorto's masterful biography looks atAmsterdam's central preoccupations. Just as fin-de-siecle Viennawas the birthplace of psychoanalysis, seventeenth century Amsterdamwas the wellspring of liberalism, and today it is still a city thattakes individual freedom very seriously. A wonderfully evocativebook that takes Amsterdam's dramatic past and present and populatesit with a whole host of colourful characters, Amsterdam is thedefinitive book on this great city.