Amsterdam

Ian McEwan writes like no one else. As his newest novel Amsterdam shows, McEwan holds few peers. Amsterdam, winner of the 1998 Booker Prize, deconstructs civility in a story where fate and the dark side of human nature seep through the cracks of an already fragile friendship. Out of the tangle of two men's lives,…

Unfair as it may be, when most Americans think of Amsterdam, we think of drugs and the red light district. Yet in Amsterdam, Russell Shorto’s deeply fascinating history of what he calls “the world’s most liberal city,” we learn that this place steeped in history, art and philosophy is so much more.

Amsterdam began as…