Via Zoom.  Register HERE.

Jewish Literary Voices: A Jewish Federation of the Berkshires Series in collaboration with Jewish Book Council

A spectacular generational saga of the making (and undoing) of a family dynasty; the riveting untold story of the gilded Jewish Baghdadi Sassoons who built a vast empire through global finance and trade—cotton, opium, shipping, banking—that reached across three continents and ultimately changed the destinies of nations.  They were one of the richest families in the world for two hundred years, from the 19^th century to the 20^th, and were known as the “Rothschilds of the East.”  Mesopotamian in origin, and for more than forty years the chief treasurers to the pashas of Baghdad and Basra, they were forced to flee to Bushir on the Persian Gulf; David Sassoon and sons started over with nothing and beginning to trade in India in cotton and opium. 

The Sassoons soon were building textile mills and factories, and setting up branches in shipping in China, and expanding beyond, to Japan, and further west, to Paris and London.  They became members of the British parliament; were knighted; and owned and edited Britain’s leading newspapers, including The Sunday Times and The Observer.  And in 1887, the exalted dynasty of Sassoon joined forces with the banking empire of Rothschild and were soon joined by marriage, fusing two of the biggest Jewish commerce and banking families in the world.  

Joseph Sassoon, Professor of History and Politics at Georgetown University, gives us a riveting generational saga of the making of this magnificent family dynasty.

Purchase the book here and a portion of the proceeds will be donated back to a local independent bookstore.