Dutch Island

In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today. In the late 1960s, an archivist in the New York State Library made an astounding discovery...

A president's secret. A Russian pipeline deal. And one woman who has to disappear. Rex Dalton came to Vanuatu for nothing at all — sun, water, and a beach where nobody knows his name. His dog Digger has other plans. Digger picks a quiet French woman out of the crowd on the sand and refuses to let the introduction go. She calls herself Jacqui. She is lying about that, and about almost everything else. When she vanishes from the island, the police like Rex for it. He talks his way clear, and then they close the file: drowned, taken by sharks. Rex doesn't buy it. Neither does Digger. What he...

“A stunning, genre-defying novel, poetic, immersive, and as dazzling as the Mediterranean sun even as it pulls the reader through the darkest corridors of human behavior. I was totally mesmerized. . . . Alex Marwood is in a class of her own.”—Lisa Jewell “A stiletto of a novel: heart...

Based on a true story, an epic historical novel from the award-winning author of Things in Jars that illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, three hundred years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island...

Aruba is famous for white sand, turquoise water, and sunshine. Its history is far more complicated. Long before the first hotel rose along Palm Beach, Indigenous communities crossed the waters between Aruba and South America, built settlements, traded, raised families, and adapted to one of the driest landscapes in the Caribbean. Then came Spanish colonization, Dutch rule, slavery, gold, aloe, phosphate, oil, war, political struggle, and eventually mass tourism. Aruba: A History of the Island Before, Between, and Beyond the Beaches follows the island through centuries of change while ...

Dutch explorers discovered for Europe many of the major island groups in the Pacific, while meting out immense brutality and privation. Some set out as pirates and privateers, others as traders seeking a new route to the Spice Islands. The voyagers left men in Hawai`i and the Tuamotus, and described for the first time the appearance and habits of many of the cultures of Polynesian islands as well those near Australia. They were the first Europeans to visit Australia, Easter Island, Fiji, Hawai`i, New Zealand, Samoa Tasmania, Tonga and many other islands.

Bloomsbury presents I Will Run Wild by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, read by Lance C Fuller. This fascinating volume offers a vivid narrative history of the early stages of the Pacific War, as US and Allied forces desperately tried to slow the Japanese onslaught that began with the sudden attack on...

Most of our ancestors lived and died without leaving a trace of their existence. Perhaps a line in church records telling of their birth, another line of their death. Or perhaps a broken tombstone in a deserted graveyard with their name carved in. An entire lifetime of cherished memories and experiences reduced to two lines in an old book or on a mossy stone. This book, this story, is my mission to bring to life one of those bits of recorded history. The PATROON 0f Staten Island is based on the Life Story of Cornelis Melyn, born in Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands in AD 1600. By 1606 Cornelis ...

The riveting true story of the rise and fall of Murder, Inc. and the executioner-turned-informant whose mysterious death became a turning point in Mob history. In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was underway that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob...

A holiday on Rhodes ends with two men dead in a palace courtyard. Rex Dalton is not working. He is standing in a crowd of tourists with his wife, Catia, and Digger, his black Dutch Shepherd, when the dog goes still and stares at a man who is about to die. Ninety seconds later two men are down, an assassin is running, and Rex is running after her. She puts a bullet in her own head rather than be taken. That night three masked men shoot their way into the Daltons' hotel suite. By morning the CIA has what is left of a dead informant's story, and it is barely a story at all: somewhere behind a ...

Discover the epic Asian history of a lush island paradise that sparked the rise and fall of maritime empires. Perfect for a focused commute, this immersive narrative sweeps across the Indian Ocean to reveal how a small geographic marvel became the ultimate prize for ambitious conquerors. Let...

Stop planning your vacation and start designing your escape to the shore-diving capital of the world. Have you ever arrived at a "paradise" destination only to feel like just another face in a crowded tourist trap? Do you worry about the hidden costs and logistical nightmares that turn a dream trip into a stressful ordeal? What if you could navigate one of the Caribbean’s most pristine islands with the quiet confidence of a local, avoiding the common mistakes that cost travelers hundreds of dollars and precious hours? Imagine yourself behind the wheel of a rugged pickup truck, the salty ...

Curaçao’s harbor became a meeting place for languages, merchants, enslaved people, oil workers, rebels, and islanders building a country of their own. Mainland connections lead to Spanish arrival, Dutch conquest, the slave trade, Papiamentu, Tula’s 1795 revolt, emancipation, the refinery, the uprising of 30 May 1969, and the political choices behind 10 October 2010. The history is maritime, multilingual, and inseparable from questions of power. Did You Know? - Did you know the island’s earliest communities maintained close connections with the Venezuelan mainland? - Did you know the ...

Experience the epic Southeast Asian history of how a scattered archipelago forged a unified republic through revolution. Perfect for your morning commute or an evening of armchair travel, this dramatic narrative transports you across the Indian Ocean. You will sail alongside ancient merchants...

A sunlit island can hide a history shaped by canoes, slavery, oil, and a language born in contact. The journey begins with early crossings from the South American mainland and reaches the creation of the modern Country of Aruba in 1986. Along the way, Caquetío villages, Papiamento, Spanish and Dutch rule, gold and phosphate, San Nicolas, refineries, tourism, and conservation reveal an island that was never isolated from the Caribbean world. Did You Know? - Did you know early canoe travelers crossed from the South American mainland long before hotels and cruise ships? - Did you know ...

Nutmeg and No Mercy A spice became worth more than human life. What followed was brutality few were meant to remember. The most brutal and profitable genocide you've never heard of. In the early 17th century, a single spice was worth more than gold. Nutmeg—exotic, intoxicating, and found on only one tiny cluster of volcanic islands: the Banda Archipelago. When the ruthless Dutch East India Company (VOC)—the world’s first true multinational corporation—discovered this monopoly, they initiated a campaign of unrivaled cruelty to secure it. This is the untold micro-history of imperial ...

In 1616, an English adventurer, Nathaniel Courthope, stepped ashore on a remote island in the East Indies on a secret mission: to persuade the islanders of Run to grant a monopoly to England over their nutmeg, a fabulously valuable spice in Europe. This infuriated the Dutch, who were determined to control the world's nutmeg supply.

Based on a real-life event, an epic historical novel from the award-winning author of Things in Jars that illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, three hundred years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same...

De zestienjarige Leia woont al sinds haar tiende in het landhuis en leidt daar een geïsoleerd leven, samen met de rest van de jongeren. Diep vanbinnen is ze altijd nieuwsgierig geweest naar wat er schuilt achter de Muur die het eiland in tweeën deelt.Wanneer ze op een avond wegrent van Sol, hun wrede leider, ontmoet ze Walt, een van de Dwazen van achter de Muur.

Wild Fictions brings together Amitav Ghosh's extraordinary writings on subjects that have obsessed him over the last twenty-five years: literature and language; climate change and the environment; human lives, travel and discoveries. The spaces that we inhabit, and the manner in which we occupy...