Jaap Jacobs

WOW! At last, a tour of New Netherland with some meat in it! Other histories (that I do not bother to review at all) are often very nice, but rather like taking a tour of New York on a bus with headphones on, and thinking you have experienced everything about the city. I have been obsessing for many decades as to where the primary records might be, and why no one has come forward with them.
OK, I admit that I'm a researcher in fact, as well as by nature, and this is not everyone's cup of East India tea. In fact, I would venture to say that most genealogy buffs just don't get what primary records are. (They are records written at the time of an event by someone who would know, a witness, an official, etc as opposed to Aunt Sadie's stories).
Here is the goldmine the rest of us have been waiting for, first hinted at by Russell Shorto: the day to day company directives, political posturing, threats, arm-wrestling, negotiations, defeats and triumphs as well as the logic behind the decisions; for example, on fur trade restrictions and then policy reversal. I started marking pages I found particularly interesting, but now have virtually the entire book to go over again. Beautifully organized and written, rare variations in common English grammar usage by the author only bring us back to the realization that one of America's first major colonies was not English-speaking, and I found that delightful in itself.
If you have an interest in details that read like a mystery, a thriller that will take you back to that time and place that gave us the basis of our financial and legal system, this is the one to read, but be prepared to spend some time, marking the pages and exclaiming, "Aha! So that's why..."..… (mere)