Briefly Noted Book Reviews | The New Yorker

Taking Manhattan, by Russell Shorto (Norton). This vivid history chronicles England’s “taking” of New Amsterdam from the Dutch, in 1664. Shorto, however, argues that it was the Dutch, not the English, who sowed the seeds of the multiethnic, religiously tolerant, and unabashedly capitalistic metropolis that would emerge as New York. He recounts the lives and doings of Peter Stuyvesant, the last leader of the Dutch colony, and his adversary Richard Nicolls, the commander of the English invasion. The taking, accomplished without bloodshed, was less a usurpation than it was a merger of two ways of being. Though Shorto describes the joint enterprise with admiration, he also confronts the dispossession of Native inhabitants which preceded it, and the city’s imminent future as a slave-trade hub.

Mornings Without Mii, by Mayumi Inaba, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (FSG Originals). On a summer day in Tokyo, the author of this moving memoir finds a kitten, “a little ball of fluff,” stuck on a fence. After rescuing the stray and naming her Mii, Inaba gradually learns the ins and outs of cat ownership: feeding, play, and the dangers of wandering outside. The book, which spans the twenty-odd years of Mii’s life, describes the daily joys and intimacies of having a pet, the difficulties that come with an aging cat, and the sorrows of outliving one’s animal companion. Inaba’s portrait of the human-feline relationship is reverential, an expression of devotion in its attention to detail.

Illustration by Ben Hickey

Discover notable new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.