" Many people--whether they live in the heartland or on Fifth Avenue--like to think of New York City as so wild and extreme in its cultural fusion that it's an anomaly in the United States, almost a foreign entity. This book offers an alternative view: that beneath the level of myth and politics and high ideals, down where real people live and interact, Manhattan is where America began. "

― Russell Shorto , The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America