Hans Koning (1) (1921–2007)

I first read this forty five years ago and thought it excellent. Rereading it again it is still excellent, but understanding much more about how the world works it is a simple story of how quite an ordinary young man becomes alienated and then an assassin. Whether he was a terrorist or a freedom fighter is left for the reader to decide. There are no real heroes in this story

Spoilers. This book was more political than I expected, although I'm not sure why. The hero is a non-conforming intellectual who works in a dead-end bookstore job in NYC, he goes to Europe and sees a woman who he feels represents the old days when the matriarchy was dominant. He tries to follow her, and wanders around Europe having different experiences & getting involved with Basque separatists and with a big-time industrialist, and finds them either working together or not. The big theme show more is the bad of modern industry/capitalism and the ideal of the matriarchal past show less

Another excellent volume in the Great Cities series, this one describes the history and culture of one of Europe's unique places, Amsterdam. The author, who grew up in he town, delves into its medieval origins, its days of glory as tyhe centre of world shipping between the East and the West, and its later slide into middle age as the focus shifted to the British and French centres of power. Somewhat like Venice (which also has its own volume in the series), Amsterdam's special feature of show more having been reclaimed from a shallow sea, imposed specific demands on its architects and builders, such as foundations based on deep pilings driven into the ground; to save space, they adopted a style of narrow and tall buildings, with artistic gables on their facades to give a picturesque touch. The city was well known for its extreme tolerance, and was the favorite refuge of all sorts of dissenters, including Protestants and Jews driven out by the Spanish Inquisition and Counter-reformation, free thinkers, communists, and Jews and others hiding from the Nazi forces in attics, cupboards, false ceilings, and son (remenber Ann Frank, who unfortunately was discovered and deported before the end of the war). show less

not that much about vermeer but what there was was good. much more about dutch painting which skimmed over too many people