New York

Mark Bramhall does accents. He does the indomitable Peter Stuyvesant. He does eighteenth-century slaves. He does first-generation New York Irish and Albanian Italians on Long Island in the 1930s. Bramhall does these accents with a lighthearted style entirely suitable for Edward Rutherfurd's trek through the history of the city of New York from the arrival of the Dutch until last year (2009). Rutherfurd specializes in vast historical dramas featuring succeeding generations of fictitious families living out their lives as famous landscapes change around them. This is his first book set in America. With the exception of a few breathtaking errors (Grant did not command at Gettysburg), Rutherfurd does a creditable job with American history. Bramhall sounds interested in what he reads as he narrates 36 hours of interlocking clan travails. If you like Rutherfurd's books, you cannot do better. F.C. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine