Wilton Historical Society’s Booked for Lunch group will look at the early days of Manhattan with a discussion of The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto.
The group will meet on Tuesday, Sept. 22, noon to 1:30, at the society at 224 Danbury Road. Participants should bring lunch; the society will provide beverages and dessert.
When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But it was more than that.
“This island city would become the first multiethnic, upwardly mobile society on America’s shores, a prototype of the kind of society that would be duplicated throughout the country and around the world,” Shorto writes, and it started with the Dutch.
Copies of the book may be borrowed from the non-fiction Reading Group area at the Wilton Library,.
The discussion is free, but registration is requested by emailing education@wiltonhistorical.org or calling 203-762-7257.