ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: What happened to the Jews who were waiting in Hamburg’s immigrant village when World War I broke out?

Steven Ujifusa is a historian who chronicles the confluence of American business, social, and maritime history. A native of New York City, 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. 

Ujifusa 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.

He has written three books, all of which are on subjects related to the sea.  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, as one of the 10 best nonfiction 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. 

Steven’s most recent 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, and the three businessmen who largely made it possible.