This episode of Big Blend Radio's WAY BACK WHEN History Podcast features best-selling author and historian Russell Shorto who discusses his new book, "Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America." 

"Taking Manhattan" reveals the founding of New York to be an invention, the result of creative negotiations that would blend the multiethnic, capitalistic society of New Amsterdam with the power of the rising English empire. But the birth of what might be termed the first modern city is also a story of the brutal dispossession of Native Americans and of the roots of American slavery. The book draws from newly translated materials and illuminates neglected histories—of religious refugees, Indigenous tribes, and free and enslaved Africans. More at https://www.russellshorto.com/