Founder: Meyer Rothschild and His Time

Meyer Amschel Rothschild was born in the Frankfurt ghetto in the mid-eighteenth century, in a city more restrictive in its treatment of Jews than any in Europe. Elon brilliantly depicts Meyer Amschel Rothschild's position there, and life on the almost unimaginably cramped Judengasse (the single street of the ghetto), where he lived his whole life - even after becoming one of the richest men in Germany.Founder is more than a short biography of an obviously extraordinary man. It is a portrait of Meyer Amschel Rothschild's times, of the condition of the Jews, of the state of Germany until it was overrun by the troops of Napoleonic France, which led to the collapse of the old order. It is about the threshold of modern times, when a world of aristocrats and gentlemen was permanently changed by a shrewd, dedicated, and loyal financier and his family.