Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Magic Circle: An Unvarnished Cultural History of Amsterdam, 1950-2026

The Magic Circle: An Unvarnished Cultural History of Amsterdam, 1950-2026

Paperback

Series: The Dutch Collection: Master the Language, Unlock the Culture, Book 12

General EuropeGeneral European HistoryGeneral Sociology

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN13: 9798171086756
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 208
Weight: 0.63
Height: 0.48 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Discover the untold story of Amsterdam-a city of dreams, rebellion, and heartbreaking loss.

Amsterdam is known worldwide as a haven of tolerance, creativity, and counter-cultural freedom. But behind the postcard-perfect canals and gabled houses lies a much darker, more complex story.

The Magic Circle takes you on an unflinching journey through Amsterdam's transformation from the quiet 1950s to the present day. It is a story of breathtaking creativity and brutal exclusion. Of radical tolerance and simmering intolerance. Of a city that opened its arms to the world and then found itself overwhelmed by the very forces it had invited in.

Through the eyes of artists, activists, squatters, feminists, queer pioneers, migrants, and the dispossessed, this book reveals the battles that have shaped modern Amsterdam. It traces the rise of the Provo movement and the white bicycles that captured the world's imagination. It follows the women who burned their corsets in the name of liberation. It documents the squatters who fought for the right to the city-and the heroin epidemic that tested the limits of Dutch tolerance. It exposes the gentrification that transformed working-class neighbourhoods into playgrounds for the wealthy, and the assassinations that shattered the myth of a unified, multicultural society.

The Magic Circle is not a nostalgic travelogue or a celebration of Amsterdam as a tourist attraction. It is an unvarnished cultural history of a city that has always been a battleground-for space, for identity, for freedom, and for the very meaning of what a city should be.

Drawing on archives, interviews, photographs, music, and the scattered memories of those who lived it, this book offers a sweeping, critical, and deeply human portrait of a city in constant struggle with itself.

For anyone who loves Amsterdam, lives in Amsterdam, or has ever wondered what lies beneath the surface of its beautiful canals, The Magic Circle is essential reading.

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