The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire
(Pantheon, 2022)

Saturday, September 30
3:30 p.m.
Lewes Public Library Meeting Room

About the book
This is the saga of the making (and undoing) of a great family dynasty: the riveting untold story of the Sassoons, the Jewish Baghdadi family known as “the Rothschilds of the East.” For two hundred years, from the 19th century to the 20th, they built a vast empire through global finance and trade — cotton, opium, shipping, banking — that reached across continents, beginning in Mesopotamia and moving through the Persian Gulf, India, China, and Japan, eventually reaching Paris and London. The author had full access to rare family photographs and archives.

This event is presented in partnership with Seaside Jewish Community.

About the author
Joseph Sassoon is Professor of History and Political Economy and Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. His ancestors were forcibly separated from the Sassoons of this book early in the 19th century, but he is fluent in the languages they spoke and the obscure Judeo–Arabic script they used in their private communications.

Purchase the book
Please help support local independent bookstores by purchasing this book at Browseabout Books, official bookseller of the History Book Festival. Online sources and digital versions are tempting; however, supporting local brick and mortar shops helps to preserve our vibrant main streets. Drop by Browseabout, order books online, or call the store at 302-226-2665. You also may purchase a copy at biblion in Lewes.

About the Festival
The History Book Festival is the first and only book festival in the United States devoted exclusively to history. With the help of our presenting funding partners — Delaware Humanities and The Lee Ann Wilkinson Group, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices I PenFed Realty — as well as our program and community partners, volunteers, and donors, the 2023 History Book Festival will be full of great discussions with authors of newly published narrative nonfiction and historical fiction. Our Keynote Address is presented by Sally Mott Freeman and John K. Freeman, and our Closing Address is presented by Dogfish Head Beer & Benevolence.

Special thanks to our program partners for their continuing support: the Lewes Public Library for event promotion and venue; Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, official bookseller of the History Book Festival; Lewes Chamber of Commerce for event promotion, and the Cape Gazette and Delmarva Public Media, our media partners.

Additional thanks to our community partners: ACLU Delaware, Beebe Healthcare, CAMP Rehoboth, Historic Lewes Farmers Market, Lewes Historical Society, Rehoboth Art League, Rehoboth Beach Historical Society & Museum, Seaside Jewish Community, and Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice (SDARJ).