Caroline

https://www.goodreads.com/librarianonparade

Caroline’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (1393)
currently-reading‎ (2)
read‎ (1352)
did-not-finish‎ (2)
american-history‎ (524)
british-history‎ (251)
english-history‎ (200)
biography‎ (194)
wishlist‎ (141)
american-civil-war‎ (126)
medieval-history‎ (116)
world-war-2‎ (108)

women-s-history‎ (100)
ancient-history‎ (73)
world-history‎ (62)
true-crime‎ (58)
world-war-1‎ (51)
popular-culture‎ (49)
victorian-history‎ (48)
kennedy-family‎ (46)
religion‎ (45)
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african-american-history‎ (30)
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spanish-history‎ (5)
welsh-history‎ (5)
african-history‎ (4)
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Caroline is Currently Reading

Caroline is currently reading

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

by Russell Shorto (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: american-history, currently-reading

Reading for the 4th time

read in August 2011

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Caroline said: " This book is about the original Dutch colony founded on the island of Manhattan, originally called New Amsterdam. I knew it existed, but that was literally the limit of my knowledge - so this book was a real eye-opener. It charts the history of the c This book is about the original Dutch colony founded on the island of Manhattan, originally called New Amsterdam. I knew it existed, but that was literally the limit of my knowledge - so this book was a real eye-opener. It charts the history of the colony: its internal struggles with the West Indian Company and its directors, mostly famously Peter Stuyvesant; the on-off again conflicts with the Native Americans; its rivalries with the neighbouring Swedish and English colonies; and its eventual takeover by England during the period breakout of war between England and the Netherlands. It also serves to highlight just how great the influence of the Dutch was in the founding of America - how New York was and always has been a very different creature to the other early cities, like Boston and Philadelphia.

I couldn't put this book down. It's as readable as a novel and twice as interesting. If only all non-fiction could be written like this. I don't think I've ever come across such a wonderfully written history book. Take this section for example:

This book invites you to do the impossible: to strip from your mental image of Manhattan Island all associations of power, concrete, and glass; to put time into full reverse, unfill the massive landfills, and undo the extensive leveling programs that flattened hills and filled gullies; to return streams from the underground sewers they were forced into, back to their original rushing or meandering course. To witness the return of waterfalls, to watch freshwater ponds form in place of asphalt intersections; to let buildings vanish and watch stands of pine oak, sweetgum, basswood, and hawthorne take their place. To imagine the return of salt marshes, mudflats, grasslands, of leopard frogs, grebes, cormorants, and bitterns; to discover newly pure estuaries encrusting themselves with scallops, lamp mussels, oysters, quahogs, and clams. To see maple-ringed meadows become numbered with deer and the higher elevations ruled by wolves.

And then to stop the time machine, let it hover for a moment on the southernmost tip of an island poised between the Atlantic Ocean and the civilization of Europe on one side and a virgin continent on the other; to let that movement swell, hearing the screech of gulls and the slap of waves and imagining these same sounds, waves and birds, waves and birds, with regular interruptions by wracking storms, unchanged for dozens of centuries.

And then let time start forward once again as something comes into view on the horizons. Sails.

When was the last time you read history written like that? ...more "

progress:

(65%)
— Jun 12, 2024 01:59PM

Jun 13, 2024 01:57AM · see review

Caroline is currently reading

Slave against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South

by Jeff Forret

bookshelves: currently-reading, african-american-history, american-history

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progress:

(44%)
— Jun 06, 2026 11:05PM

May 28, 2026 09:47AM

Caroline’s Quotes

“The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

233 likes

“Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

tags: lose, lost-love, moment

576 likes

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

tags: gentleman, honor, killing, magic

691 likes

“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

tags: life

1968 likes

“To be more precise it was the color of heartache.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

151 likes

More of Caroline’s quotes…