On October 11 the talk “Our 400-Year Battle with Water” with Russell Shorto will take place at the Museum of the City of New York
On October 11, from 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm, the talk “Our 400-Year Battle with Water” with Russell Shorto will take place at the Museum of the City of New York. For tickets click here.
Manhattan’s natural advantage as an island at the mouth of two great rivers helped turn New York City into one of the world’s greatest commercial metropolises. Yet from the earliest Dutch settlements in the 1600’s to the present day, the city’s coastal location has also long rendered it susceptible to flooding and hurricanes. Join historian and best-selling author Russell Shorto as he revisits New York’s centuries-old battle with water, and explores the parallels between the early Dutch efforts to tame the tides and the city’s present-day responses to climate change.
Following his talk, Shorto will be joined by Mayor Pauline Krikke of the Dutch city of The Hague for a brief exchange.
Includes Museum admission, book signing, and reception to follow.
This event is part of Core Conversations, a series of lectures, talks, and tours in which New York City’s leading thinkers examine the four key themes of our New York at Its Core exhibition — diversity, density, money, and creativity — each through their own unique lens.
Russell Shorto (born February 8, 1959) is an American author, historian, and journalist, best known for his book on the Dutch origins of New York City, The Island at the Center of the World. Shorto’s research for this book relied greatly on the work of the New Netherland Project (now known as the New Netherland Research Center) and the New Netherland Institute.[3]Shorto is the New Netherland Research Center’s 2013 Senior Scholar. His most recent work, published in October 2013, is “Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City”, which tells the story of the city from its origins, through its Golden Age, to the present day.