BOOK REVIEW | Many a Shanghai surprise: the story the Communists want to forget

Jonathan Kaufman’s ‘The Last Kings of Shanghai’ delves into the fascinating Sassoon and Kadoorie dynasties

29 March 2021 - 20:33 By Michele Magwood

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, wrote the French author Honoré de Balzac. The crime, in the case of the dizzyingly wealthy Sassoon family in Asia, was opium smuggling. In The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China (Viking) Jonathan Kaufman excavates the fascinating story of two families, the Sassoons and the Kadoories, that has been buried under drifts of Communist propaganda. Kaufman is an old China hand, having reported on the country for more than 30 years for The Boston Globe, and he brings a balanced and nuanced perspective to a tricky history...

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