Once Upon a Time in Shanghai (English Edition): A Jewish Woman’s Journey Through 20th-Century China

This is not a history of Shanghai, and it is not a political analysis of the 20th century. It is one woman’s memory of growing up in a city that no longer exists—a Shanghai of Russian Jewish refugees, British colonial officials, Chinese tailors, American jazz, and Japanese occupation. Rena Krasno was born there in 1923, lived through the Pacific War and the internment camps, and left in 1949. She writes about her childhood, her family, the people she knew, and the streets she walked, with the sharp eye of someone who lost the world she grew up in and spent the rest of her life remembering it. If you want to understand 20th-century Shanghai through a personal, intimate story—rather than a textbook or a academic study—this is it.