I have always thoroughly enjoyed Rutherfurd. His Sarum was a seminal book and captured my imagination. This one is just as long and goes from New Amsterdam all the way to 9/11. The early chapters are very enjoyable and one of them shows a slaves view of early New York which was fascinating.

If I have any quibbles only that characters do tend to exit off stage. I wanted to know what happened to the flawed Margaretha De Styl, the Dutch merchants character who did the dirty on the elderly slave - but she just disappeared. The only other thing is it could be abit more desctiptive of places, architecture.

But a breezy read and written by an Englishman. An Englishmans angle on the revolutionary war is quite interesting. Mel Gibson eat your heart out.