NEW YORK: The Threads of Power

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To New York came the bold and the fearful, the strong and the helpless of the world: first the sturdy Dutch traders, then French-speaking Walloons, Norwegians, Danes, Germans, Scots, English, and, on a slow boat from Brazil, 23 Jews. By 1644, just 35 years after Henry Hudson sailed up the great river that bears his name, at least 18 languages were represented in New York's babel of tongues. In the mid-1800s, more than 1,000,000 Irish, driven by famine, poured into New York, along with endless waves of Italian, German and Balkan...