The Sassoons, known as "the Rothschilds of the East," were one of the richest families in the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Baghdadi Jewish family built a vast financial and trade empire that spanned continents, became members of British Parliament, and owned some of Britain's leading newspapers. In his new book The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire, Joseph Sassoon details the family's history. At this event, Sassoon will be in conversation about his book with Rebecca Kobrin, Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University.
Joseph Sassoon is Professor of History and Politics at Georgetown University. He is also a Senior Associate Member at St. Antony's College, Oxford and a Trustee of the Bodleian Library. His previous books include the prize-winning Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party, The Iraqi Refugees, and The Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics.
Rebecca Kobrin, Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, works in the fields of immigration history and American Jewish History. Professor Kobrin served as the Hilda Blaustein Post-Doctoral Fellow at Yale University and the American Academy of Jewish Research Post-Doctoral Fellow at New York University. Her areas of specialty include American Jewish history, immigration history, international history, and Jewish economic history. Her research, teaching, and publications engage in the fields of international history, urban history, Jewish history, American religion, and diaspora studies.