When America Roared

Praise for When America Roared

“Trying to understand the 2020s? Look closely at the variety of American experience amid the 1980s economic boom. So argues journalist-professor Kaufman in this brisk portrait of executives, investors, and political crusaders whose influence remains strong…. [A] history of a moment shaped by celebrity CEOs and disciplined politicos.”—Kirkus

“This is an essential read: beautifully written, smartly argued, and thoroughly balanced. Just a few pages in, I realized that this was exactly the book I needed to understand our current moment.”—Jonathan Eig, author of Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestseller King: A Life

“Take a fascinating journey back to the roaring Eighties with Jonathan Kaufman. In When America Roared he brings the most interesting figures from the decade back to life in a superb narrative that is instructive about how we got to the present era.”—Jill Abramson, author of Merchants of Truth

“A superb guide to understanding how the world-changing events of the 1980s — among them, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the rise of Reaganism, the triumph of capitalism globally — formed the foundation of our present moment. Jonathan Kaufman’s thesis is a sobering, refreshing and well-crafted analysis about how we ended up where we are, whether we like it or not.”—William D. Cohan, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Tycoons and House of Cards

Praise for The Last Kings of Shanghai

“The Last Kings of Shanghai is not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China’s past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China’s modern history.”—LA Review of Books

“Engrossing … Kaufman is an old China hand based on stints with the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal, so he brings a reporter’s eye for stories as a way of explaining so much more … It’s a story that will excite readers.”—Forbes

“The Last Kings of Shanghai examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties. In the end, if not in the beginning, they were, as Kaufman puts it, ‘on the wrong side of history.’ But now, thanks to him, they are at least part of history.”—The Boston Globe

“A multigenerational epic of the Sassoon and Kadoorie dynasties, which rightly takes business out of the shadows and puts it at the heart of modern China’s history … The author entertainingly contrasts the undisciplined Sassoons with the strict approach of Kadoorie and his sons Lawrence and Horace … The book is excellent too on China’s tumultuous history … This work does a great service in putting business at the heart of a key development — China’s re-emergence.”—Financial Times

“Few histories have been written about the Sassoons and Kadoories in part because the families didn’t welcome the attention … Kaufman visited an impressive roster of archives to uncover new details.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Illuminating … It is surely not the end of the story.”—The Economist

Jonathan Kaufman

Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter whose bylines have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News. His extensive reporting and editing have covered topics such as labor, local activism, racism and job discrimination, and corporate tax dodging. He has been recognized with the Gerald Loeb Award, the George Polk Award, and by Columbia University School of Journalism, among others.

Kaufman is the author of:

• The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China
• A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe
• Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America, winner of the National Jewish Book Award.

He is currently the director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.

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