Nathaniel's Nutmeg

A slice of history presented well.

I was born in Holland, but had no idea of the behaviour of the Dutch in the spice islands, so this book was a shock. It was at times quite a difficult read... The Durch treatment of the natives and of the English too was quite appalling. Finally the story of the founding of New York capped it all. If it weren't so tragic, I'd have said it was an absurd joke. However, the book is an excellent background to an obscure period of history that nevertheless underpins our current world.

The story one discovers through this book is very interesting and I find it worth knowing and recalling. The book seems to me well written. The facts that are mentioned are also relevant and should be known by more people.I miss, however, more references to sources other than the British ones: I mean local, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, who were the active countries in the region at the time of this developments. That would have undoubtedly given much light and context to all the narrated developments.One final remark is that when the English look at who have actually done more real harm to them in history, perhaps they should look first at the Dutch.

Book arrived when it was said to arrive. Book condition was good and as expected. Plus the price was right! This book was a good read but I personally enjoyed "Russian Roulette" more.

Reads like a novel full of suspense and exciting turns of affairs. The reader feels like being in the middle of the action and can almost smell the sweet fragrance of the nutmeg trees.

Yes, as an example of historical writing the book has problems. One could argue that it is over-detailed; it was tedious in places. But I wouldn't want too many details to be missing, because early 17th century values and practices are fascinating in their own right, and actions of the early explorers would have been incomprehensible without them. And yes, Milton often circles back in his chronology, goes back and forth in time so that it's sometimes hard to follow. But that it a problem endemic to historical accounts in which several narratives are advancing simultaneously on several different fronts. Better to put up with the reading difficulty than to have the account falsely simplified. And though I did have to mark the map pages and keep referring back to them, there could have been no alternative other than a companion atlas (certainly at additional cost). But the virtues of this book far outweigh its faults and earn it five stars in my estimation.For one who rarely reads history, this account was fascinating on many levels. Milton has organized innumerable first-person accounts, by tradesmen and ship captains and others not given to long descriptives, into this tapestry.Many conclusions Milton allows to emerge for themselves. Life was dirt cheap in the plague-ridden seventeenth century. Crews were nevertheless insanely brave to sail halfway around the world in boats no bigger than yachts. And so many other human traits were in evidence here besides the lust for wealth: curiosity, competitiveness, adventurousness.The means of written expression of even the meanest of sailors are artfully elegant and understated by our standards, interesting in themselves.Milton's cause-effect historical ironies, coming only in the final chapter, made sticking with this account unusually rewarding. I was reminded of an old BBC program "Connections," which specialized in the unintended consequences of discoveries and inventions. History is cool.