Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.
New York: MacMillan Company, 1966. 1348 pages.
Tragedy and Hope is a diplomatic, military, economic, and cultural
history of the world, dealing mainly with the years from about 1900 to 1950.
Quigley was professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown
University, where he was best known for his rigorous undergraduate teaching.
His credentials as a historian were excellent, and he was well-connected
with the Washington elite. But Quigley is something of an embarrassment to
those elites, because he called it the way he saw it. Since they cannot
match his breadth and depth, nor duplicate his archival research, Quigley
is usually criticized for not using footnotes. It won't wash -- the quality
of his scholarship is evident on every one of these 1300 pages.
The embarrassment has to do with the fact that Quigley believed in the
relevance of secret history -- the machinations of powerful personalities,
the role of international finance and banking (following the money), the
importance of covert action and diplomacy, and the collusion of Anglo-
American elites. Although his prose is too subdued and well-crafted to
label him a conspiracy theorist, Quigley has admirers on both the Right and
Left who study him for this very reason. His appeal is universal: a rare
combination of range, competence, and integrity in a tricky profession.
ISBN 0-945001-10-X
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