Geert Mak was born in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands in 1946. He is a journalist and the best-selling author of the books De engel van Amsterdam (The Angel of Amsterdam), Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam (Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City), Hoe God verdween uit Jorwerd (Jorwerd: The Death of the Village in Late Twentieth-Century Europe), De eeuw van mijn vader (My Father’s Century), and In Europa (In Europe). His latest book is De brug (The Bridge), about the Galata Bridge in Istanbul. In 2008, the Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung (Prize for European Rapprochement) was conferred upon Geert Mak. Together with Russell Shorto, he recently published “1609: The Forgotten History of Hudson, Amsterdam and New York.