Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I by Steven Ujifusa - 2023 - 372 Pages
"Well-researched. . . . [A] meticulous investigation of turbulent days, as chronicled in The Last Ships from Hamburg, illuminates for the reader that once free of the fetters of European anti-Semitism, all things were possible.” — The Times of Israel
"Steven Ujifusa’s thoroughly researched and well-told story is a revelation. Intimate portraits of J.P. Morgan, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and several others who figured in the great transatlantic migration culminate in the startling story of its main character, Albert Ballin -- the little-known giant (though barely five feet tall) who was responsible for bringing more immigrants to the U.S. than any other person in the nation’s history." — Daniel Okrent, author of The Guarded Gate and Last Call
“Ujifusa’s meticulously researched and well-written work illustrates the vast influence these generations of immigrants had on American culture and society.” — Jewish Book Council
“With impeccable research, masterful prose, and deep feeling, Steven Ujifusa tells the incredible story of one of the greatest human exoduses in history, of the 1.5 million Jews who escaped Czarist Russia, and the three people who helped make that possible. He gives readers a front-row seat along the way, to the boardrooms of German shipping companies, third-class hulls of ships crossing the Atlantic, to tenements on the Lower East Side. This is a page-turning history on a grand scale, with an intimate touch.” — Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of Gates of Fire and The Lion’s Gate
Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I by Steven Ujifusa is a valuable addition to American, Jewish and Russian history, focusing on the immigration of Russian Jews to America, seen as the promised land. Most went in steerage class on ships that could take from 30 days to a week. Conditions were rough and for most the cost was high. Jewish aid societies played a big part and immigrants already in America helped their relatives. They had to pass through Hamburg, in the 1870s the busiest port in the world, stopping in England then on to New York City.
Ujifusa goes into lots of details on Russian, German, and American history, including periods of American anti- immigration attitudes. Some wealthy Americans supported immigration as they needed workers for their factories while American workers feared immigrants would lower wages.
STEVEN UJIFUSA is the author of A Man and His Ship and Barons of the Sea. He received an AB in history from Harvard University and a master’s degree in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania and has given presentations across the country and on the high seas. He is the recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence from the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s Literary Award. He lives with his wife, a pediatric emergency room physician, and his two sons in Philadelphia.
I know it's historical, but what a timely read. Thanks for writing about it!
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