Readers of this absorbing book will learn a great deal about a politically ambitious English immigrant named Daniel Horsmanden who as a judge on New York rsquo s Supreme Court played a pivotal role in the transmutation of a sequence of robberies and suspicious fires in 1741 into a vast conspiracy

Russell Shorto fires a powerful salvo in the war of words over America rsquo s origins Forcefully contesting the ingrained notion that English settlements set the mold for American values he mounts a convincing case for an alternative scenario in which the Dutch-sponsored colony of New Netherland