Dec 15, 2014 • Russell Shorto

Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City

Highlights: “There was actually a time when people wanted to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions (in 1935, Winston Churchill thought it possible that Hitler might “go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation”).”

“So how, in an increasingly interconnected world, do we integrate and still keep our values?”

“Opinions differ on the question of whether a golden age is something you can experience while it’s happening or whether it only comes into focus on reflection…no matter how grand and prosperous and momentous the time in which you are living may be, its grandeur is inevitably stained by the incessant drabness of the present.”

Finished reading: Dec 2014