Summary of Russell Shorto's Amsterdam

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 A day in Amsterdam begins with me leaving my apartment with my toddler son in my arms, strapping him into his seat between the handlebars of my bicycle, and setting off through the quiet, generally breezy streets of our neighborhood.

#2 Amsterdam’s tolerance of vice is made apparent when you visit the neighborhood surrounding the school. The streets are lined with stores that sell sex toys, advertising agencies, and strip clubs. But when you live there for a while, the exotic becomes mundane.

#3 The neighborhood of Nicolaas Maesstraat and Frans van Mierisstraat, which was home to the city’s elite, has names that instantly give it some of the luster of Amsterdam’s age of glory. But as you go farther away from the center, the houses get plainer.

#4 Iman and her husband were legal residents of the Netherlands, but their legal residence was deemed a reason for untrustworthiness. The decision was later reversed, and Iman’s sister was allowed to visit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822545953

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Insights on Russell Shorto's Amsterdam

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

A day in Amsterdam begins with me leaving my apartment with my toddler son in my arms, strapping him into his seat between the handlebars of my bicycle, and setting off through the quiet, generally breezy streets of our neighborhood.

#2

Amsterdam’s tolerance of vice is made apparent when you visit the neighborhood surrounding the school. The streets are lined with stores that sell sex toys, advertising agencies, and strip clubs. But when you live there for a while, the exotic becomes mundane.

#3

The neighborhood of Nicolaas Maesstraat and Frans van Mierisstraat, which was home to the city’s elite, has names that instantly give it some of the luster of Amsterdam’s age of glory. But as you go farther away from the center, the houses get plainer.

#4

Iman and her husband were legal residents of the Netherlands, but their legal residence was deemed a reason for untrustworthiness. The decision was later reversed, and Iman’s sister was allowed to visit.

#5

Outside, she is standing on the ground. More shouts in the distance. A gallows, a human body swinging in the air. People are being pushed into lines.

#6

The author’s father, a window dresser, was taken away and killed by the Nazis. The author was marked with a tattoo that stated she was a slave worker.

#7

Frieda is hard on herself. She is 86 years old and suffers from intestinal problems that stem from typhoid and dysentery she contracted at Auschwitz, as well as normal age-related ailments. She is still very sharp, though, and worries constantly about losing her sharpness.

#8

The city is famous for its craziness, and it is. The city has between 5,000 and 7,500 licensed prostitutes in a given year, most working in streetside windows. While prostitution is legal and regulated, the marijuana trade falls under the curious Dutch classification gedogen, which means technically illegal but officially tolerated.

#9

Amsterdam is the most liberal place on earth, and it has influenced the modern world to a degree that no other city has. It is famous for one thing: the tattered, ancient word liberalism.

#10

The word liberalism has different meanings in the United States and in Europe. It is often used to describe free markets and business freedoms, but in Europe, it is more broadly used to describe social causes and individual freedoms.

#11

The history of ideas is embedded in people and their struggles, their bodies, their physical or emotional turmoil, their hunger for new fashions and flavors. They are linked: there are natural tendons connecting the founding of the first stock market, the development of secular art with Rembrandt and his contemporaries, and the crafting of a groundbreaking official