The last kings of Shanghai : the rival Jewish dynasties that helped create modern China / Jonathan Kaufman.
Material type:![Text](/opac-tmpl/lib/famfamfam/BK.png)
- text
- still image
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780735224438
- 0735224439
- Sassoon, David, 1792-1864 -- Family
- Sassoon family
- Kadoorie, Elly, 1865-1944 -- Family
- Kadoorie family
- Jews -- China -- Shanghai -- History
- Jews -- China -- Shanghai -- Social life and customs
- Jewish businesspeople -- China -- Shanghai -- Biography
- Shanghai (China) -- Ethnic relations
- Shanghai (China) -- Biography
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
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Main Library | NonFiction | 951.132 K21 | Available | 33111010527212 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
"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 Books
An 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.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
"The epic story of two rival dynasties that flourished in Shanghai and Hong kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era. The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than 175 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"--Back cover.