We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About The Last Kings Of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish
Product Description "In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe"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 BooksAn epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival. Review "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
