Constantijn Huygens was a poet, composer and connoisseur of art and the classics. He was also secretary and confidant to three princes of Orange for 62 years. Hofwijck was also the place where Constantijn’s son Christiaan spent a significant part of his life. Christiaan Huygens was a member of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge and became one of the greatest inventors and scientists.

At the end of his life, at Hofwijck, he wrote Cosmotheoros, his magnum op...

When he returned to the Netherlands in 2009, decades after World War II, Jefferson Wiggins realized that no one he met knew about the segregated US Army during the war, nor did they know about the contribution of Black American soldiers to the liberation of the Netherlands. They were not mentioned anywhere in Dutch history books or in archives. Together with oral historian Mieke Kirkels, Wiggins sat down to record his memories. Wiggins passed away in 2013, and his widow, Janice Wiggins-Paters...

The Jewish Orphanage in Leiden was the last one of eight such care homes to open its doors in the Netherlands before the Second World War. After spending almost 39 years in an old and utterly inadequate building in Leiden's city centre, the inauguration in 1929 of a brand-new building, shown on the front cover, was the start of a remarkably productive and prosperous period.

The building still stands there, proudly but sadly, to this day: the relatively happy period lasted less than fourteen y...

This book on water and climate change goes beyond the usual and predictable analyses, by bringing religion and values into a discussion that is often dominated by technocratic solutions. The three case studies of Jakarta, Cape Town, and Amsterdam demonstrate the challenges of water management in urban areas and the role religion can play in addressing them. With representatives from science, politics, economics, and religion, as well as young voices, the book stimulates a values-driven dialog...