Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has written and reported on China for thirty years for The Boston Globe, where he covered the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square; The Wall Street Journal, where he served as China bureau chief from 2002 to 2005; and Bloomberg News. He is the author of A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe and Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He is director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.
"The Last Kings of Shanghai is not just a brilliant,
well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it
also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's
modern history."-LA Review of Books
"Engrossing . . . Kaufman is an old China hand based on stints with
the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal, so he brings a
reporter's eye for stories as a way of explaining so much more . .
. It's a story that will excite readers."-Forbes
"The Last Kings of Shanghai examines the little-known
history of two extraordinary dynasties. In the end, if not in the
beginning, they were, as Kaufman puts it, 'on the wrong side of
history.' But now, thanks to him, they are at least part of
history."-The Boston Globe
"A multigenerational epic of the Sassoon and Kadoorie dynasties,
which rightly takes business out of the shadows and puts it at the
heart of modern China's history . . . The author entertainingly
contrasts the undisciplined Sassoons with the strict approach of
Kadoorie and his sons Lawrence and Horace . . . The book is
excellent too on China's tumultuous history . . . This work does a
great service in putting business at the heart of a key development
- China's re-emergence. -Financial Times
"Few histories have been written about the Sassoons and Kadoories
in part because the families didn't welcome the attention . . .
Kaufman visited an impressive roster of archives to uncover new
details."-The Wall Street Journal
"Illuminating . . . It is surely not the end of the story."-The
Economist
"The Last Kings of Shanghai reminds us of that time in
captivating detail, and even more surprising, reveals that those
"last kings" were displaced Jews from Baghdad who mastered Great
Britain's tools of empire." -Airmail.com
"Kaufman writes with style and strikes a careful balance between
holding the families accountable for their "colonial assumptions"
and celebrating their accomplishments. This richly detailed account
illuminates an underexamined overlap between modern Jewish and
Chinese history."-Publishers Weekly
"An absorbing multigenerational saga . . . of two significant
Jewish families who built wildly prosperous financial empires in
Shanghai and Hong Kong that lasted for nearly two centuries . . .
Kaufman argues persuasively that their entrepreneurial drive built
a lasting capitalist legacy in the country."-Kirkus
Reviews
"A fascinating look at two powerful dynasties as well as a sharp
lens through which to view Shanghai's ups and
downs."-Booklist
"What's even less likely than a clan of displaced Baghdadi Jews who
find themselves in twentieth-century Shanghai and change it
forever? Try two clans of displaced Baghdadi Jews. This is the tale
that Jonathan Kaufman tells in his remarkable history of the
Sassoon and Kadoorie families. Read it and the Bund will never look
the same."-Peter Hessler, author of River Town: Two Years on
the Yangtze and Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in
China
"With exacting research and masterful prose, Kaufman excavates the
tremendous influence of two Jewish families, both with roots in
Baghdad, on China's layered and complex modern history. An
astonishing read, on every level. "-Georgia Hunter, author of
We Were the Lucky Ones
"Jonathan Kaufman shows how the families of Sassoon and Kadoorie
surfed the vicissitudes of history to dominate their chosen arenas
commercially and socially. They were indeed 'Kings', but it was the
great city of Shanghai that was to both make and break them."
-Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking and City of
Devils
"Gripping and epic in sweep, The Last Kings of Shanghai reads like
a thriller but is also enormously informative, offering a vibrant
history of the cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong through the
fascinating lens of two rival Jewish dynasties that helped shape
them." -Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger
Mother and Political Tribes
"Jonathan Kaufman mines a rich vein of untold history that knits
together the Jewish diaspora with the stirrings of Revolution in
modern China. The improbable saga of the Sassoon family reads like
an eastern and Sephardic companion to the story of the Warburgs--a
saga both personal and political, riveting and ultimately
heartbreaking. And in Kaufman's always-deft hands, it's a terrific
read."-Roger Lowenstein, author of America's Bank: The Epic
Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve
"Kaufman brings to life the extraordinary forgotten history of two
Jewish families who helped transform China into a global economic
powerhouse. A masterpiece of research, The Last Kings of Shanghai
is a vivid and fascinating story of wealth, family intrigue, and
political strategy on the world stage from colonialism to communism
to globalized capitalism."-Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor
of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth
College
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