Russell Shorto
The Man Who Put the Dutch Back on the U.S. Map
Russell Shorto, the American writer who has wound up becoming an unlikely cultural ambassador for the Netherlands, flinches uncomfortably when I say he must be a national hero, but then his shoulders relax, his eyes stop rolling, and he cracks a small smile. “I don’t know about that,” he says, “but I was knighted.” He hastens to add, “They do that to a lot of people here.” Though a foreigner, Shorto, author of a critically acclaimed book about the Dutch founding of New York, deserves whatever honors the state can …
