Judith Neumann Beck in the San Jose Mercury News on March 14, 2004

Wrote:

I was not only completely caught up in Shorto's story, which is as readable as a finely written novel, but convinced that his premises are correct. We haven't known many details about New Netherland. Most people's knowledge probably does begin and end with that infamous real-estate-for-beads deal, about which Shorto tells us we've been Eurocentrically mistaken.

Janet Maslin in the New York Times on March 18, 2004

Called the book " lively and accessible"

She also wrote:

Relying on the fruits of Dr. Gehring's enterprise, Mr. Shorto has created far more than an addendum to familiar American history: a book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past. Without the adventurous Dutch spirit and the internecine power struggle described here, "the English would probably have swept in before Dutch institutions were established, New York would have become another English New World port town like Boston, and American culture would never have developed as it did."