Books like The Anglo-American Establishment

A brilliant piece of research. This book details the mechanisms by which a small number of men managed to gain control of immense power. The book shows that there had been existing power groups in Great Britain wielded by small groups who used close associations, friendships and intermarriage to consolidate their power, but that this type of power structure was intensified in the early 19th century, initially around Cecil Rhodes and Lord Milner. These men were motivated by what they saw as moral interests, but as Quigley himself points out on page 197, there are inherent dangers in such a small group of people wielding such enormous power. Later on in the book, Quigley, writing in 1949, blames the Milner group for the dissolution of the British Empire, the race wars of South Africa, and the horrors of the Second World War.There is so much fascinating information in this book, such as the way that The Times was used to direct propaganda towards the influential middle classes and the way that even historical education was controlled - Hitler could have learned a lot about subtleties of technique from this group. I would have given the book five stars if it wasn't for the lengthy genealogies which were really dull to read and could maybe have been presented in a more interesting way.