'Island at the Center of the World'When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its recordsrecently declared a national treasureare now being translated. Russell Shorto draws on this remarkable archive in The Island