First compiled in 1996, this bibliography was updated in June, 2005.

Who Runs the Country?
A Bibliography on the U.S. Power Structure

Mary Meehan

Understanding the power structure of the United States helps those who analyze nearly any serious policy issue, especially those who do so with the aim of changing policies. It is not really true that "you can't fight city hall" -- or the U.S. power structure -- but it certainly helps to know what and whom you are fighting.

This bibliography has a special orientation toward the understanding of eugenics (the effort to breed a "better" human race); but it also relates to war-and-peace issues and economics.

A wealth of material, some written by members of the power structure and some by radical critics, shows how the upper class and its institutions--private schools and clubs, Ivy League universities, the foundations and "think tanks"--shape and control key policy decisions.

This is not to say that people within the power structure agree with each other on everything. Often they have been split on immigration policy and, more recently, on abortion. In other eugenics-related areas, such as population control in general, the power structure seems to be united.

The following books and articles are listed in chronological order.

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite. London: Oxford University Press, 1956. A classic analysis of the U.S. power structure; includes chapters on "The Very Rich," "The Corporate Rich," "The Warlords" and "The Political Directorate." Mills challenges some American legends, as when he says: "It is not usual, and it never has been the dominant fact, to create a great American fortune merely by nursing a little business into a big one....It is difficult to climb to the top, and many who try fall by the way. It is easier and much safer to be born there."

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. The late Prof. Quigley, was a brilliant historian at Georgetown University. See, especially, pp. 935-949 on Wall Street and the political left and pp. 950-956 on the "international Anglophile network" (the Round Table Groups, including the Council on Foreign Relations).

G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967. Contends that members of the U.S. upper class and "their high-level employees" (in institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations) control the executive branch of the government and strongly influence the other branches. Maintains that the New Deal produced a major split within the power elite; explains the "business liberals." (Note: The book has been through many editions since 1967.)

Warren Weaver, U.S. Philanthropic Foundations: Their History, Structure, Management, and Record. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. See pp. 365-374 for Frederick Osborn's essay, "American Foundations and Population Problems." Here the key U.S. eugenics strategist shows how the foundations supported early work in population control.

David Horowitz, "Billion Dollar Brains: How Wealth Puts Knowledge in its Pocket," Ramparts 7, no. 12 (May 1969), 36-44. Stresses enormous influence of family and corporate wealth, acting through private foundations such as Rockefeller and Ford, on the development of the prestige universities.

G. William Domhoff, The Higher Circles: The Governing Class in America. New York: Random House, 1970. Domhoff, a University of California psychologist and sociologist, has written several extremely interesting books on the U.S. power structure. Especially useful in this book are chapters on "How the Power Elite Make Foreign Policy" and "How the Power Elite Shape Social Legislation." Also helpful is a chapter in which Domhoff explains where his views of the power structure differ from those of some conservatives.

Steve Weissman, "Why the Population Bomb Is a Rockefeller Baby," Ramparts 8, no. 11, (May 1970), 42-47. A radical says of the Rockefellers and other elites after World War II: "All they could see was people, people, people, each one threatening the hard-won stability which guaranteed access to the world's ores and oil, each one an additional competitor for the use of limited resources."

World Bank Building, Washington, D.C.

Frank W. Notestein, "Reminiscences: The Role of Foundations, The Population Association of America, Princeton University and the United Nations in Fostering American Interest in Population Problems," Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 49, no. 4 (Oct. 1971), part 2, 67-85. A leading eugenicist shows how he and colleagues used powerful institutions to advance population control. But he neglects to mention their eugenics links.

Home of the Rockefeller Foundation, New York, N.Y.

Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. Very readable account of this powerful family. Does not explain their many eugenics connections, except at times under other labels, but shows how they use power. Also describes inner conflicts that family wealth and power produced in the "Cousins" generation (the children of David Rockefeller and their cousins). Has some priceless quotes, e.g., that one Rockefeller "had the wealth to buy loyalty and the breeding to buy it in such a way that neither party in the transaction had to admit a deal had taken place."

Laurence H. Shoup and William Mintner, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977. Special stress on the Council's overwhelming influence on secret studies during World War II, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, that largely determined postwar foreign policy. (Though not noted in this book, eugenicist Frank Notestein served on one secret study committee, where he advocated population control for poor nations.)

Council on Foreign Relations, New York, N.Y.

G. William Domhoff, The Powers That Be: Processes of Ruling Class Domination in America. New York: Random House, 1978. How the rich and powerful stay that way. Deals with special interests, policy-making, candidate selection, and opinion-shaping.

Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power. New York: Times Books/Random House, 1986. Describes how political conservatives, dismayed by the liberal establishment, built their counter-establishment of intellectuals, publications, think tanks and political power. Includes an interesting chapter on neoconservatives, who "thrive on ideological combat....No one is frowned upon for throwing food and screaming at the dinner table; it's all in the family."

Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.

John and Pat Caldwell, Limiting Population Growth and the Ford Foundation Contribution. London & Dover, N.H.: Frances Pinter (Publishers), 1986. Valuable information, especially when checked against a eugenics membership list. Authors mention eugenics occasionally, but misleadingly imply that it's no longer an active movement.

Lewis H. Lapham, Money and Class in America. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988. An insider's critical view of the wealthy, with stress on their attitudes. Harper's editor Lapham says that: "The rich object to the very thought of other people also becoming rich--crowding the golf courses, commanding tables at '21,' taking up too much of the available light, space, air and publicity." He is not kind to the media, either: "...the American press is, and always has been, a booster press, its editorial pages characteristically advancing the same arguments as the paid advertising copy."

Federal Reserve Board Building, Washington, D.C.

Teresa Odendahl, Charity Begins at Home: Generosity and Self-Interest Among the Philanthropic Elite. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1990. Claims that "American philanthropy is a system of 'generosity' by which the wealthy exercise social control and help themselves more than they do others." Also suggests that we "need hard-nosed muckraking reporting of the charity scene."

John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Conscience: An American Family in Public and in Private. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991. An admiring portrait of the late John D. Rockefeller 3rd by two former employees. Has valuable information on JDR 3rd's involvement in population control, abortion, and euthanasia.

James A. Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite. New York: Macmillan, 1991. Traces the rise of research institutes or, "think tanks," and their influence on public policy. Noting that President Woodrow Wilson feared the idea of a "government of experts," Smith suggests that "much of what Wilson feared has come to pass..."

William Greider, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Greider, a former Washington Post editor and Rolling Stone writer, focuses on corporate power and its overwhelming influence on politics--especially on economic, labor, and toxic-waste issues. Chapters include "Who Owns the Democrats?" and "Rancid Populism" (about the Republicans) and "Angle of Vision" (a critique of newspapers). Greider also analyzes successes and failures of grassroots groups that try to fight corporate power. How average citizens can influence policy is a major theme of this thoughtful book.

Meg Greenfield, Washington. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. A view of the human side of powerful people in Washington, D.C. Suggests that the powerful keep playing roles they acquired in their families and high schools, such as "the good child, the head kid, the prodigy, and the protégé." Also offers a useful insider's account of the media in Washington. (The late Meg Greenfield was editorial page editor of the Washington Post for many years.)