This is a private event. Please email Renee Lamarque with any questions.
Join us for an evening with celebrated historian Steven Ujifusa discussing The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I. This evening is being generously hosted by Anya Salama on Fisher Island.
“Thoroughly researched and beautifully written history.”—New York Times Book Review
“Absorbing . . . a David-and-Goliath tale of the industrial age.”—Wall Street Journal
A propulsive human drama that chronicles the mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe to America in the early years of the twentieth century, and the men who made it possible.
Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Many sailed on steamships from Hamburg.
This mass exodus was facilitated by three businessmen whose involvement in the Jewish-American narrative has been largely forgotten: Jacob Schiff, the managing partner of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who used his immense wealth to help Jews to leave Europe; Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, who created a transportation network of trains and steamships to carry them across continents and an ocean; and J. P. Morgan, mastermind of the International Mercantile Marine (I.M.M.) trust, who tried to monopolize the lucrative steamship business. Though their goals were often contradictory, together they made possible a migration that spared millions from persecution. Descendants of these immigrants included Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Estée Lauder, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Fanny Brice, Lauren Bacall, the Marx Brothers, David Sarnoff, Al Jolson, Sam Goldwyn, Ben Shahn, Hank Greenberg, Moses Annenberg, and many more—including Ujifusa’s great grandparents. That is their legacy.
Moving from the shtetls of Russia and the ports of Hamburg to the mansions of New York’s Upper East Side and the picket lines outside of the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, The Last Ships from Hamburg is a history that unfolds on both an intimate and epic scale. Meticulously researched, masterfully told, Ujifusa’s story offers original insight into the American experience, connecting banking, shipping, politics, immigration, nativism, and war—and delivers crucial insight into the burgeoning refugee crisis of our own time.
Steven Ujifusa is a historian who chronicles the confluence of American business, social, and maritime history. His third book, The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I, tells the story of Eastern European Jewish immigration to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was released by HarperCollins on November 21, 2023, and named by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year.
His second book, Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship, tells the saga of the great 19th century American clipper ships and the Yankee merchant dynasties they created. In 2012, The Wall Street Journal named his first book, A Man and His Ship: America’s Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the SS United States (Simon & Schuster), as one of the 10 best nonfiction books of the year.
Steven is the recipient of the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence from the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, a MacDowell artist residency, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. He has appeared on National Public Radio, CBS Sunday Morning, and numerous other media outlets.
As a corporate historian and president of Tradewinds History LLC, he is the author of Local for the Long-Term, a history of Airgas, Inc., and Creative Capital, the official history of J.M. Forbes & Company, one of the oldest independent financial services firms in the United States. Other clients include The Paul Foundation of Essex, CT, Haydon Bolts Inc., as well as individuals seeking to preserve the stories of their families, businesses, and homes.
A native of New York City and raised in Chappaqua, New York, Steven received his undergraduate degree in history from Harvard University and a joint masters in historic preservation and real estate development from the University of Pennsylvania. An amateur singer, he is a long-time member of the Orpheus Club of Philadelphia.
Steven resides in Philadelphia with his wife Alexandra (an emergency room pediatrician) and two sons.
About PEN America Authors’ Evenings
The PEN America Authors’ Evenings are nights of literary dinners in private homes and intimate settings. Please visit the Authors’ Evenings webpage for our full calendar of dinners. Proceeds from the PEN America Authors’ Evenings support PEN America’s programming to secure the liberty of persecuted and imprisoned writers around the world, to defend freedom of expression, and to promote literature and international cultural exchange.