Recommended Books, Films & Music

Books

Fiction -- The Booker Prize-winning short novel Amsterdam plays with themes of love and friendship, death and mortality, and on Amsterdam's status as a city where euthanasia laws are relatively liberal, but most of it actually takes place in England. In that sense the city is more of a city of the mind than a real place. Amsterdam is actually quite familiar with playing the role of a screen on which outsiders project both their fantasies and their fears. Far more sense of place is provided by Nicolas Freeling's Love in Amsterdam, the first in his series of Inspector Piet van der Valk detective novels, and even though it's the Amsterdam of almost a half century ago, the city is easily recognizable, and something of a co-protagonist. Much the same could be said of Alistair MacLean's thriller Puppet on a Chain, though written at a time when the author had descended into faintly ridiculous, formulaic tales.

History -- Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age lets you inside Amsterdam's greatest period. Schama, adeptly, is simultaneously lighthearted and scholarly -- a chapter headed "The Pretzel and the Puppy Dog" refers to a portrait by Jacob Cuyp. Most of the 700 pages feature works of art, which are explained in the text. Though Schama modestly describes his essays as "more eccentric than persuasive," he succeeds in his intention "to map out the moral geography of the Dutch mind, adrift between the fear of deluge and the hope of moral salvage."

If a single individual personifies the Holocaust, that person must be Anne Frank. Her diary, compiled as a series of letters addressed "Dear Kitty," and kept for more than 2 years until her arrest on August 4, 1944, has come to symbolize the plight of millions of Jews during Nazi terror. The Diary of a Young Girl includes photos of Anne and the people she hid with, plus a map of the secret annex in the house on Prinsengracht. Her candid descriptions of living as a teenage girl in tragically restricted conditions, of her thoughts and dreams, hopes and fears, boredom and anguish, provide an unusually moving account of a life cut far too short.

Anne Frank is the best known but was not Amsterdam's only notable wartime Jewish diarist. Lawyer and poet Abel Herzberg, a survivor of the same concentration camp where Anne was held, kept a secret diary during his incarceration, which he later published as Between Two Streams: A Diary from Bergen-Belsen.

Roving through 800 years in 300-some pages, Geert Mak's Amsterdam, A Brief Life of the City, lays bare the city's soul, linking tales about ordinary folk with historical fact. Amsterdam's journey from boggy 12th-century fish-and-farm settlement to modern metropolis is populated with princes and painters, Calvinists and Catholics, Provos and rebels; in this book, it's enlivened with black-and-white illustrations. Mak's journalistic skill and historical insight amply fulfill his ambition to write an historical work readable enough that you can read it in your hotel room before going to bed.

Art -- Painters of Amsterdam: Four Centuries of Cityscapes is the kind of book that makes you wonder why nobody thought of putting out something like it before. Spread by spread, the large-format book unfolds a veritable gallery of paintings depicting the grand old Maid of the Amstel in all her moods and at key periods in history, from a 1640 Rembrandt etching to Matthias Meyer's Museumplein. Art historian Carole Denninger-Schreuder's incisive text accompanies the reproductions, which are by artists as diverse as Pieter Saenredam, George Hendrik Breitner, Isaac Israëls, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Piet Mondrian, and many more. The book adds up to an unforgettable trip down Amsterdam's memory lane, in the company of those observers best able to illuminate the journey.

If you want to buy a book about Old Masters, make it The Glory of the Golden Age, by Judikje Kiers and Fieke Tissink. Published to coincide with the bicentennial of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, this weighty tome comprehensively covers the painting, sculpture, and decorative art of Holland's Golden Age (1600-1700). Works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals, and Jacob van Ruisdael are presented along with those of artists not as famous. Roughly chronological, the book contains a wealth of description about the country's vibrant 17th-century art scene.

Maybe you'd rather not be overwhelmed by Golden Age art but would still like an idea of what the heck was going on then. In this case, a good, affordable, and tolerably portable insight is afforded by 100 Memories: Paintings from the Golden Age, by Ronald de Leeuw -- the Rijksmuseum's former director.

For a personal insight into van Gogh's life and art, read Ken Wilkie's The Van Gogh File: A Journey of Discovery. What began as a routine magazine assignment in 1972 to coincide with the opening of the Van Gogh Museum became exactly what the book's subtitle indicates: A journey that continued long after the article was published. Wilkie followed van Gogh's trail through the Netherlands, Belgium, England, and France. Along the way, Wilkie met some of the last surviving people to have known or met the artist. In one of many dramatic discoveries, he finds an original van Gogh drawing while rummaging through a pile of old photographs in an English attic. Equally compelling are revelations from Vincent's private life, especially descriptions of his star-crossed search for love and family.

Society -- You may find yourself chuckling over The UnDutchables, as you learn more about Dutch attitudes to home, money, children, transport, and much more. Are all Dutch people rude, their children undisciplined, and Dutch drivers abusive? Colin White and Laurie Boucke, Anglo-American expatriates who first published this paperback in 1989, have their tongues firmly in their cheeks throughout, choosing first to amuse and only second to inform.

Cuisine -- Heleen Halverhout's postcard-size The Netherlands Cookbook (also published as Dutch Cooking), might be considered unambitious, but then the same is true of Dutch cooking -- nourishing rather than rich, solid rather than subtle. What other cookbook would give recipes for boiled, mashed, and fried potatoes? Halverhout includes winter favorites like pea soup, hachée (beef and onion stew), and hotchpotch (alongside whimsical illustrations that play on Dutch stereotypes) and explains Dutch eating habits, devoting plenty of space to cakes and traditional desserts such as Hague bluff and John-in-the-bag.

Photography -- The 143 pages of photographer Martin Kers's Amsterdam dazzle with a mix not only of subjects, but also of vantages and camera angles, panorama and detail. His graceful images depict subjects like morning mist over a canal, abandoned bicycle remains, kids playing soccer in Vondelpark, and explosions of merrymaking on Queen's Day. A master of composition, Kers infuses even demolished buildings and library books with visual magic, capturing the city's atmosphere and those in it as they pose, walk dogs, or mend a bike. The accompanying text is by Dutch poet Willem Wilmink.

Jacob Olie's evocative images of 19th-century Amsterdam have only recently been rescued from oblivion -- 5,000 of his negatives resurfaced in 1960. A schoolteacher with a passion for photography, Olie shot most of his pictures during the 1860s, when photography was in its infancy, and during the 1890s, when development in technique permitted him to break new ground. Though strictly documentary, the 79 black-and-white photographs in De Verbeelding, a small horizontal book, ooze nostalgia. They afford glimpses of recognition and show people going about their business in a semi-rural, unhurried city where canals haven't yet been filled, and where trams are powered by horses, carts by men, and trains by steam.

Films

Amsterdam-born director Paul Verhoeven is probably the best-known Dutch filmmaker -- but that's not saying much, and Verhoeven's Hollywood movies, such as Basic Instinct, RoboCop, and Starship Troopers, don't contain much (if anything) inspired by his hometown. Closer to home is his wartime resistance drama Soldier of Orange (1977), starring Jeroen Krabbé and Rutger Hauer.

Among other Dutch World War II films that are worth seeking out is The Girl With the Red Hair (1981), starring Renée Soutendijk as controversial Resistance heroine and Communist Hannie Schaft (1920-45), who operated against the German occupiers in the Haarlem area and was executed in the dunes at Bloemendaal, west of Amsterdam, 3 weeks before the war's end. Wartime drama The Assault won the Oscar for best Foreign Language Film in 1986.

Chinese restaurant Nam Kee made a name for itself at the movies by playing a notable role in the red-hot romance flick Oysters at Nam Kee's (2002), starring Katja Schuurman. Set in Amsterdam and its seacoast resort Zandvoort, Simon (2004) hits most of the hot buttons in contemporary Dutch life -- sex, drugs, homosexuality, euthanasia -- in a moving story of a free-living individual confronted by his own mortality.

Amsterdam starred as the darkly atmospheric setting of the underworld thriller Puppet on a Chain (1972), based on the novel of the same name by Scottish writer Alistair MacLean, and which contained a memorable chase sequence on the canals. And the city played a supporting role in the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003), starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth, is an appropriately moody interpretation of the "back story" to the Vermeer painting, set and partly filmed in Delft.

Music

About the only well-known song in English to feature Amsterdam in a starring role is Tulips From Amsterdam (1956), which was originally written in German. This dose of concentrated saccharine keeps unlikely company with pot smoking, sex tourism, and gay parades as popular images of the city. Kids might likely be more familiar with A Windmill in Old Amsterdam (1965), which tells a heart-warming tale of "a little mouse with clogs on, going clip-clippety-clop on the stair." If your French is up to snuff, seek out passionate Belgian singer Jacques Brel's hymn to dissipated sailors, Dans le Port d'Amsterdam (1964), covered in English as In the Port of Amsterdam (1970) by David Bowie.

The city's homegrown music scene runs more to jazz, blues, and experimental electronic music, as can be experienced at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, Bimhuis, and a slew of clubs around town. For something a little more traditional, there are schmaltzy bars and clubs around Rembrandtplein and in the Jordaan, where you can sway to songs about stolen kisses behind the windmill, if you've a mind to -- but of course they'll be in Dutch. For big international stars, head out to the Heineken Music Hall, and for bigger-than-big names, to the Amsterdam ArenA stadium, both of them in Amsterdam-Zuidoost (Southeast).