Recent Book Review

Between 1890 and 1920, approximately 2.5 million Eastern European Jews fled their homelands amongst fierce antisemitism to emigrate to the United States. The principal port of debarkation was Hamburg where Kuhn, Loeb and Company, an investment bank operated by Jacob Schiff, the Hamburg-American Line managed by Albert Ballin, and the International Mercantile Marine trust, operated by J. P. Morgan assisted in the Jewish migration.

Steven Ujifusa, a marine historian, persuasively portrays decisions of Jewish businessmen residing in Germany and the United States that created an industry of immigration and settlement. The arrival and settlement of the Eastern European Jews sparked a newfound nativist campaign including the Brahmins of Boston to establish the Immigration Restriction League (1894) and the U.S. Congress passing the Immigration Acts of 1921 (Emergency Quota Act) and 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act).

Ujifusa thoroughly researched the book and skillfully interlaced the narrative. The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I continues Ujifusa’s chronicling the confluence of American business, social, and maritime history as his two previous books A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States (2012) and Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World's Fastest Clipper Ship (2019).