For the New Amsterdam colony ( now New York) Russel Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World is a pretty nice, somewhat informal introduction. For primary sources, there is also a recent translation of Adriaen van der Donk's 1655 A Description of New Netherland , which is a very important source and in some ways is at the center of Shorto's book. There's also a recent biography of van der Donk , published by SUNY, that looks solid but I have not yet read it.