Joseph Sassoon is Professor of History and Political Economy and Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies 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. His ancestors were forcibly separated from the Sassoons of this book early in the nineteenth century, but he is fluent in the languages they spoke and the obscure Judeo-Arabic script - indecipherable to previous historians - they used in their private communications, which are the foundation of this book.
A tale reminiscent of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks ... Not only is
this a powerful human story but it also carries contemporary
resonance in a time when great fortunes are again being made
*Financial Times*
The engrossing story of the meteoric rise and calamitous fall of
the Sassoons, set against the backdrop of peak British imperialism
... what a scintillating show it was while it lasted, as this vivid
and richly researched book reveals
*The Sunday Times*
A very readable, sensitive and original account of a remarkable
family, deftly weaving together the history of the business, the
history of the family and their place in the wider history of
Britain, India and China
*Spectator*
Sassoon's assiduous mining of the archives has produced a family
history writ large ... the story of the Sassoons' rise from Ottoman
Baghdadis to incalculably wealthy figures of the British
Establishment is fascinating
*Daily Telegraph*
Logan Roy might do well to read The Global Merchants for tips ... a
tale of commercial derring-do and dissection of the paperwork, the
exigencies of calm, but rapid, decision-making that could could
lead to boom or bust
*South Morning China Post*
Methodical, deeply researched and presented with considered care
... Sassoon's book isn't just a marvellous yarn, it's an Ottoman
'Our Crowd' that gives his family its due'
*The New York Times*
A marvellous epitaph to a monumental family, makers of several
worlds and keepers of none
*Wall Street Journal*
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