2021, Book 6: A short history of Amsterdam, Richter Roegholt

The 17th and, especially, the 16th century maps of Amsterdam are the best part of this book.

The text required a good, or even a borderline competent, editor. The translation is bad, filled with orthographical and grammatical errors and with questionable stylistic choices. In a country filled with people perfectly fluent in English it is surprising that one can find a professional translator of such poor ability. The original Dutch text probably wasn't much better, if one is to judge by the many odd skips and repetitions. My favourite moment is on page 143:

In 1973 the Vincent van Gogh museum was opened in which the collection of Vincent van Gogh, Theo van Gogh's son was housed.

It is difficult to imagine a set of mental contortions that can plausibly lead to such a sentence. Not only is its main clause inane (no kidding, you say the work of the most famous painter of the 19th century is housed in the museum that shares his name?), and not only is the elaboration inane (Vincent is obviously far more famous than any of his relatives), but it is incorrect to boot: Theo was Vincent's younger brother. (Their father's name was Theodorus, and it never appears in the shortened form.)