Overview

An interpretative history of global urbanity in the 1920s and 1930s, from the vantage point of Bombay, London, and Shanghai, that follows the life of business tycoon Victor Sassoon. In this book, historian Rosemary Wakeman brings to life the frenzied, crowded streets, markets, ports, and banks of Bombay, London, and Shanghai. In the early twentieth century, these cities were at the forefront of the sweeping changes taking the world by storm as it entered an era of globalized commerce and the unprecedented circulation of goods, people, and ideas. Wakeman explores these cities and the world they helped transform through the life of Victor Sassoon, who in 1924 gained control of his powerful family's trading and banking empire. She tracks his movements between these three cities as he grows his family's fortune and transforms its holdings into a global juggernaut. Using his life as its point of entry, The Worlds of Victor Sassoon paints a broad portrait not just of wealth, cosmopolitanism, and leisure but also of the discrimination, exploitation, and violence wreaked by a world increasingly driven by the demands of capital.

Full Product Details

9780226834184

Table of Contents

Reviews

“Wakeman is a historian at the top of her game. From the career of the international businessman Victor Sassoon between the world wars, she spins a tale of three cities and the myriad networks of trade, finance, and society that connected them. Mixing urban history, business history, and biography, this book is at once a story of empire and wealth as well as one of migration, poverty, strikes, and war. If you are looking for an imaginative take on global urban history, this is a wonderful place to start.” * Simon Gunn, author of Automobility and the City in Twentieth-Century Britain and Japan * “Following the life of Victor Sassoon, this engaging and accessible book successfully argues that the interwar period in the first decade of the twentieth century was when large cities around the world became intricately connected through the circulation of global capital.” * Toby Lincoln, author of An Urban History of China * “Wakeman brings imperial economic history to life, interweaving brilliant cultural analysis with lively stories of men, money, and markets. The result is a tour de force of global urban history during the interwar period.” * Lynn Hollen Lees, author of Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects *

Author Information

Rosemary Wakeman is professor of history at Fordham University. She is the author of A Modern History of European Cities: 1815 to the Present as well as The Heroic City: Paris, 1945–1958 and Practicing Utopia: An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement, the latter two also published by the University of Chicago Press

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available