No comments about One Plus One Equals Three-Pairing Man/Woman Strengths: Role Models of Teamwork (The Role Models of Human Values Series, Vol. 1) (The Role Models of Human Values Series, Vol. 1).

5 comments about House of Rothschild: The Worldªs Banker 1849-1999.

1. Ferguson insults the purchaser of the Penguin Paperback by omitting the bibliography and only providing sketchy footnotes. "Serious scholars" who desire these items are advised to buy the Harcover edition. Other than that, it is a good read



2. I agree with one of the critics that the book had many facts and details that broke up the pace of the book for me. Ferguson presumes that the reader knows a fair amount about bonds, consuls and other financial mechanisms. He would have done well to slow down a bit and explain a few of the terms and concepts. And I think that Ferguson tells an utterly superficial and innocuous history of the Family. Long awkward sentences make for labored reading. That having been said, this was no doubt a delicate and ambitious undertaking.



3. This book was just way too detailed for me. It contains lots of facts and figures about biz transactions but it is just too much. It was to the point of who cares? Niall Ferguson really did his home work as far as that is concerned but it made the book boring. To me it felt like it was written by an accountant. It is the story behind the facts and figures and how they came about which make for interesting reading. But I have to give him credit for the time he spent putting this book together is unimaginable.
   
   Having said that I would have enjoyed it more if it had some stories where they made 1.2 million on this deal or lost 500,000 on that deal but it wasn't there. Just an accounting at the end of the year saying this was what they had at the end. No exciting stories like the robber barons trying to take over a railroad or JP Morgan putting together large trust deals in the US. Although chapter 11, which tells of the Rothschild involvement with mining and Cecil Rohdes and De Beers was very interesting and by far the the best chapter in the book, although it was not enough for me to give it a better rating. But that chapter for me made the book.
   
   I skimmed more of this book then I did the first one. There are a few more interesting stories in here but not enough to really keep you interested. If you like well written interesting biographies this is probably not for you.



4. A very complete book, a mine of facts but the author was unable to sort what is important from miscellaneous. The mix of general european history, business history and family events is by moments as indigestible as porridge por a non-scot.



5. What has Ferguson not told about the Rothschilds in this second volume of his seemingly exhaustive two volume set?
   
   He all too facilely dismisses Victor Rothschild's being the fifth man in the World War II Soviet spy ring of Blunt, Burgess, et. al. He dosen't discuss the Rothschilds' connection with Freemasonry at the highest level, and their gift to Israel of the Supreme Court building, a New World Order artifact, heavily laden architecturally with Freemasonry symbolism. Likewise, glaringly absent from note are Illuminati activities, which the family has been widely thought to be involved with. History Professor Ferguson could fill in his blanks on some vital but shady Rothschild history from Henry Makow, a researcher and writer--and a Jew.
   
   According to an article on Ferguson in Harvard Magazine (May/June '07), he is about to take on biographical writing of Henry Kissinger, at Kissinger's request. This should generate caution. Could Kissinger's "papers" be entirely relied on? Kissinger probably saw what sheen Ferguson could put on the Rothschild's archives as raw material, ignoring or minimising important but dark concerns.
   
   Same question on the Warburg's family papers that he is availing himself of. What will Ferguson tell us about Paul Warburg's role in establishing the egregious Federal Reserve, and Max Warburg financing the Bolshevik revolution?
   
   Let's hope that Ferguson can either put this and other allegations to rest once and for all or illuminate them if true--but now that he's shown his colors with the Rothschilds, I doubt that he will, either way.
   
   It seems that sympathetic academic interest in these elitist families and individuals is inevitable in part because that is where the big bucks for research and publishing would be, especially for a scholar who professes to have, as he says in the Harvard Magazine article, "become a thorough philo-Semite".
   
   Is there a whiff of opportunism here at the expense of objectivity?

No comments about Spirit House: Compass of Connection.

No comments about Gypsies Greed & Politics.

No comments about Autobiography Of William Stout, Of Lancaster, Wholesale And Retail Grocer And Ironmonger; A Member Of The Society Of Friends.

No comments about John Jacob Astor.

1 comments about Murdoch.

1. Our world is dependent on broadcast media, and the more rapid our lives change, the more we depend on impersonal and mass-produced flows of information. Mr. Shawcross gives a deep look into the world of information flow, a flow that is not manipulated by evil, maniacs, but rather a world of flow that is about making money for owners and investors of information service providers. Presenting both the history of commercial media development and also interpretation of the personalities involved, I highly recommend this book to see beyond the hysteria of anti-media communications and see that one person can make a difference in how information is procured, packaged, and sold.
   A few of my favorite quotes are:
   --the new world favors those who pursue policies of which the traders approve.
   --The Disruption of 1843 had little to do with theology. It was the culmination of 130 years of a bitter dispute in which the English crown had sought to control the Scottish Church by the appointment of ministers loyal to London. In the early nineteenth century a new generation of younger, more radical men had emerged in the Church of Scotland; they were known as "the wild party," or "the popular party," or the Evangelicals. Ecclesiastically and theologically conservative, yet socially and politically liberal (and some of the downright radical), they hated the controls imposed by London through the Scottish lairds.
   --Free Church ministers and elders like James Murdoch tended to be active, hard-headed, well-educated, practical men who knew how to make money and how to use it wisely.
   --The debate on the free flow of information would be settled by engineers, not by politicians. Governments would not for long be able to conceal the evidence of their crimes.
   --"The very existence of new information channels, operating in real time and across all frontiers, will be a powerful influence for civilized behaviour. If you are arranging a massacre, it will be useless to shoot the cameraman who has so inconveniently appeared on the scene. His pictures will already be safe in the studio five thousand miles away and his final image may hang you."
   --Information was being presented as entertainment.
   --A really integrated media company has to be in the production of entertainment. It also has to be in news reporting.
   --Nations are now increasingly defined by the extent to which knowledge is a tradable commodity in their economies.
   
   This is not a great, classic book, but it does give valuable snippets of how global media systems operate and manipulate and are manipulated.

No comments about The Railway King: A Biography of George Hudson, Railway Pioneer and Fraudster.

No comments about Man from Mono.

No comments about Journal of a West India Proprietor (Oxford World's Classics).