Joseph Sassoon Discusses his book The SASSOONS: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire in Conversation with New York Times Writer Binyamin Appelbaum

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“As engaging as Sassoon renders the intricacies of business and religion, the book is at its best when the family’s supercharged ambitions take center stage….Rags-to-riches stories may all be the same, but it’s the way in which a fortune is lost that’s truly compelling. Sassoon’s detailed account of the decentralization of family power and the proliferation of descendants interested in spending but not making money is well paced and supremely satisfying….Joseph Sassoon’s book isn’t just a marvelous yarn, it’s an Ottoman ‘Our Crowd’ that gives his family its due.”—New York Times Book Review

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 19th century to the 20th, 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 Bushehr on the Persian Gulf; David Sassoon and his sons started over with nothing and beginning to trade in India in cotton and opium.

The Sassoons soon were building textile mills and factories, setting up branches in shipping in China, and expanding beyond, to Japan, and further west, to Paris and London. They became members of 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 was soon joined by marriage, fusing together two of the biggest Jewish commerce and banking families in the world.

Against the monumental canvas of two centuries of the Ottoman Empire and the changing face of the Far East, across Europe and Great Britain during the time of its farthest reach, Joseph Sassoon gives us a riveting generational saga of the making of this magnificent family dynasty.

Books will be available for sale. A book signing will follow the conversation.

Joseph Sassoon is Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and holds the al-Sabah Chair in Politics and Political Economy of the Arab World. He is also a Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford, where he also completed his PhD. Professor Sassoon, whose research focuses on political economy, economic history, Iraq, Iraqi refugees, and authoritarianism, has published extensively and is the author of five books.

Binyamin Appelbaum is the lead writer on economics and business for The New York Times editorial board. He writes about public policy, often through the lens of economics. In recent years he has focused on issues including economic inequality, climate change and the housing crisis. Appelbaum examines what is broken and illuminates paths that might lead to a better place.

Joseph Sassoon Photo Crefit: Michael Lionstar