Review for Xenophobe's Guide to the Dutch : This book is incredible, I have never been so frightened reading a book and yet so riveted that I couldn't stop reading. I loved this book. It grabbed me from the first page and I had trouble putting it down. Read it, you won't be disappointed.
Xenophobe's Guide to the Dutch info
It's all in your mindThe spirit of tolerance does constant battle with the ghost of Calvin for control of the Dutch psyche. Few Dutch people go to church anymore, but they don't need to. Inside every Hollander's head is a little pulpit containing a preacher with a wagging finger. Going DutchThis is the nation that once sold scrapers for getting the last remnants of the film of buttermilk from the inside of the bottle. The Dutch "think with their pockets." Parsimony is not an embarrassment, but a virtue. Culture vulturesThe Dutch are cultural magpies. They keep a beady eye on other people's cultural trends, and are swift to snap up sparkling new fashions. This means that rather than producing an indigenous culture, they have become voracious consumers of everybody else's—true Europeans, whose cultural fads and fancies know no borders. The Netherlands acts as a giant cultural sponge. Double DutchFor the Dutch, the other side of the question is as important as the question itself. Di
