Wewill meet again on Thursday, August 22rd, at 7:30 pm, via Zoom, todiscuss the nonfiction book, The LastKings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China, by Jonathan Kaufman. It is 350 pages, and waspublished in June, 2020. Thirty-three libraries in the Link+ system have thebook: https://csul.iii.com/search?/X(The+Last+Kings+of+Shanghai)&SORT=D/X(The+Last+Kings+of+Shanghai)&SORT=D&SUBKEY=(The+Last+Kings+of+Shanghai)/1%2C10%2C10%2CB/frameset&FF=X(The+Last+Kings+of+Shanghai)&SORT=D&1%2C1%2C. The LastKings of Shanghai is available in print and electronicformats.
“In vividdetail… examines the little-known history of two extraordinarydynasties.”–The Boston Globe
“Not just a brilliant, well-researched, andhighly readable book about China’s past, it also reveals the contingencies andironic twists of fate in China’s modern history.”–LA Review of Books
An epic, multigenerational story of two rivaldynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century Chinasurged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Shanghai, 1936. The Cathay Hotel, located on the city’s famous waterfront, isone of the most glamorous in the world. Built by Victor Sassoon–billionaireplayboy and scion of the Sassoon dynasty–the hotel hosts a who’s who of globalcelebrities: Noel Coward has written a draft of Private Lives in his suite andCharlie Chaplin has entertained his wife-to-be. And a few miles away, Mao andthe nascent Communist Party have been plotting revolution.
By the 1930s, the Sassoons had been doing business in China for a century,rivaled in wealth and influence by only one other dynasty–the Kadoories. Thesetwo Jewish families, both originally from Baghdad, stood astride Chinesebusiness and politics for more than 175 years, profiting from the Opium Wars;surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and losing nearlyeverything as the Communists swept into power. In The Last Kings of Shanghai, JonathanKaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families participated in aneconomic boom that opened China to the world, but remained blind to thecountry’s deep inequality and to the political turmoil at their doorsteps. In astory stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufmanenters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale ofopium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.
The book lays bare the moral compromises of the Kadoories and the Sassoons–andtheir exceptional foresight, success, and generosity. At the height of WorldWar II, they joined together to rescue and protect eighteen thousand Jewishrefugees fleeing Nazism. Though their stay in China started out as a businessopportunity, the country became a home they were reluctant to leave, even onthe eve of revolution. The lavish buildings they built and the boomingbusinesses they nurtured continue to define Shanghai and Hong Kong to this day.As the United States confronts China’s rise, and China grapples with thepressures of breakneck modernization and global power, the long-hidden odysseysof the Sassoons and the Kadoories hold a key to understanding the present moment.
