Kirkus Reviews
From the National Book Award-winning author of The House of Morgan (1990): an engrossing history of the Hamburg banking family that explores the love/hate relationship between Germany and its native-born Jews with as much interest as it recounts the lives of those who made Warburg a name to be reckoned with on both sides of the Atlantic. Drawing on unrestricted access to members of the extended family and their voluminous archives, Chernow offers a start-to- present chronicle. Tracing the line from the mid-16th century, he reviews how canon and secular law shunted the era's Jews into trade or moneylending. By 1773, however, the patriarch's descendants were able to settle in the thriving port of Hamburg, where they put down deep roots and established themselves as world-class bankers. In the meantime, the family tree developed branches whose scions competed as vigorously among themselves as with outsiders. Tracking the varied fortunes of Warburgs through Bismarck's Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and beyond, Chernow documents how intermarriage with Our Crowd's Loebs and Schiffs enabled the Warburgs to make their mark on Wall Street as well as in Europe. A notable case in point was Paul M. Warburg, a driving force behind the FRB's 1913 creation. In like vein, WW II drove Siegmund Warburg to London, where he became a postwar power in The City. Other Warburgs distinguished themselves in the arts, philanthropy, and government service, as well as in business, mingling with the likes of Balfour, Einstein, Gershwin, von Papen, FDR, Kaiser Wilhelm II, et al. In an outcome that affords his panoramic narrative an affecting measure of unity, Chernow details thetransaction whereby a latter-day generation reclaimed the merchant bank where their own story began. A lively, definitive, and thoughtful account of a clan whose star has waxed as that of its Rothschild rivals has waned. (Thirty- two photographs—not seen)
From the Publisher
A twentieth-century epic [told] with authority, sympathy, and panache. . . . Important, fascinating, and moving.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Excellent. . . . An enthralling story, told with a novelist’s zest.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Splendid. . . . Chernow does a wonderful job fleshing out the lives of the major characters in this family drama.” —The Wall Street Journal
“[Ron Chernow] has surpassed himself in this absorbing chronicle.” —The New Yorker
“This is grand-scale scholarship. . . . It is all here, along with so much of the painful, tumultuous history of our time, all in one splendid book.” —David McCullough, author of The Wright Brothers
“Ron Chernow’s blockbuster history traces the heart-rending saga of this German-Jewish banking family. . . . Despite his scrupulous documentation of sources, Chernow is never less than readable. A graceful and lucid writer, he offers old-fashioned narrative in the grand style.” —Newsday
“The history of a fascinating family. . . . What we learn about in this book is people. . . . Chernow is very good at bringing them to life. He has a sharp eye for detail. . . . One can open the book anywhere and enjoy it.” —The New Republic
“Ron Chernow . . . has made the stories of these four brothers the cornerstones of a dark, though not quite tragic, family saga. [He is] a graceful writer with an eye for the telling anecdote. . . . The result is a book of considerable pathos and immediacy. . . . Through his portrait of this complex dynastic organism, he sheds interesting light on various larger historical themes.” —The Boston Globe
“Excellent family history. . . . This chronicle of one of the most important banking families in history tells us much about the people. . . . A great, and lengthy, saga.” —The Times (London)
“The Warburgs stand revealed as a family more fortune-kissed, fated and fascinating even than the Kennedys, and . . . just as important . . . and now their story has been ably told.” —The New York Daily News
