Interesting if sometimes over-thorough explanation of one possible future of fascism. Instead of the jackbooted versions of WW2, for example, Gross argues that future iterations of fascism will be more palatable, more friendly in their presentation, and that they will come about due to an unholy alliance between Big Business and Big Politics. Well, we can see today how often business seems to pay off government in order to get their own way, and how some businesses have grown to have an economic power greater than some countries, so this isn't off-base on Gross' part.

However this book does, I think, suffer somewhat though from being a product of its time. It was written, I believe, in the late 1970s, and is is extremely America-focused. Which is not in itself a flaw, but what Gross hasn't foreseen, for example, is the growth in technology and how this affects his thesis. There are sections of the book dealing with technology, and how it can (and will) be used in surveillance, and in this as with the often corrosive influence of Big Business Media (thank you Mr. Murdoch, you climate-denying anti-science hack) Gross is certainly prophetic. Nonetheless, a lot of the media consumed nowadays, especially by the younger sections of the population, is social. This has an effect on news coverage. When a current event catches my attention, for example, I get a lot of information on that event from the internet, which frequently has real-time responses and videos from those living through the event. There's a growing trend in the democratisation of media, is what I'm saying, that will eventually, I trust, counter the Murdochs of the world. Now Gross can't have been expected to predict this sort of thing, but it does affect his argument... even though a lot of that argument remains valid and concerning.