Review: The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family

The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family by Ron Chernow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my third Ron Chernow book, and the other two were also about banking dynasties. As with the others, and even more so, we are dealing we a family lasting several centuries, with cousins branching off into extended families, and many people sharing the same name. However, I thought Chernow did an excellent job at keeping things (more or less) clear, and the main members of this family are each portrayed in vivid detail. In general it follows a chronological order, although not always, which is probably best, since, once again, it would just be a mess of cousins in different continents with similar names entering into similar financial wheelings and dealings.

Of course, Nazi Germany and the persecution of the Jews makes up a great part of the book as well, in addition to life in Germany, in the US (and somewhat in London and Sweden as well), and a broad history of finance throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

In fact, I found it very interesting to read about how Nazism crept into Germany, and how it was viewed from the perspective of a German-Jewish family, and how they felt just as German as Jewish. In fact, they were discriminated against in their own Germany for being Jewish, but then, due to their nationality (and accents), were discriminated against in London and New York for being German as well.



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