The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline [Paperback]

If one really likes this stuff, believes in it, or just is curious, then go to the source and read Carroll Quigley's "Tragedy and Hope" or "The Anglo-American Establishment." They are far more detailed, more nuanced, and come from someone who has indeed done some serious homework on the subject. Perloff does little more than condense and offer a selection of the more outrageous claims presented by folks like Quigley. For that matter, one might just go to another of the sources for folks like Perloff and Pat Robertson ("The New World Order" makes a similar argument with a strong religious overlay) and read Nesta Webster's writings about the secret societies that rule us all. Of course, these folks don't like to credit Webster as an inspiration because she was rather blatant in her anti-semitism. Modern writers of conspiracy theories have learned to avoid such things, but don't dispute any of the claims which people like Webster linked to the secret power of Jewish bankers and Marxists.

There are better books that lay out the same theory of an establishment "ruling" class, and that do so with far more balance and nuance than this one. Try William Domhoff's "Who Rules America," "The Bohemian Grove," or "The Higher Circles" (G. William Domhoff has done some of the best research work on the American establishment). There's plenty there for the folks who think someone is really in charge (and in control) of everything that happens, but all within the context of a rational examination of the actual nature of the American establishment elite.