House of Rothschild : The World's Banker, 1849-1999

A detailed excellent account of the family's history, its growth and partial decline to its survival into the 21 century, with a description of its financial role in the 19th century in building Europe and of the family members and their contributions. Some of the financial descriptions were too complicated to follow, which is why I did not award a fifth star. But then I am not an accountant or banker.

The title of this book is "The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849 - 1998". Unfortunately this title does not really cover the subject. It's not really until the final chapter that we finally get into the period just after World War II.With the book being published in 1998 I expected something more up to date. But almost everything after 1940 is covered in just one cursory chapter: the epilogue. And this tells us very little. It's almost like a narration of s series of balance sheets and profit and loss statements!For example, I read in  The Synagogue Of Satan - Updated, Expanded, And Uncensored  by Andrew Carrington Hitchcock that Amschel Rothschild (then 41) was killed in a Paris in April 1996. Surely this story could have been included in the book! (According to Hitchcock's book, Rupert Murdoch tried to suppress the story, or claim that Amschel died of a heart attack. But I always knew you couldn't trust the Murdoch press, even before the phone-hacking scandal.)Even some of the major deals are only covered in a few lines I suspect the reason for this is that many of those deals reflect the more recent ones - and they are bad for the public. We don't want people to know that they are being stolen from, do we?Ferguson seems to suggest that the Rothschild now have little to no power in financial circles. But we know that is not true. They are sucking us dry even more than ever! After all, have you ever seen a flea trying suck blood from another flea?