The books were widely acclaimed by some historians, although they did receive some criticism. John Lewis Gaddis, a Cold War–era historian, praised Ferguson's "unrivaled range, productivity and visibility", while criticising the book as unpersuasive and containing contradictory claims. Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm had praised Ferguson as an excellent historian, but criticised him as a "nostalgist for empire". In a mixed review of a later book by Ferguson, "The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred", a reviewer for "The Economist" described how many regard Ferguson's two books on the Rothschilds "as one of the finest studies of its kind." Jeremy Wormell wrote that while "The World's Banker: A History of the House of Rothschild" had its virtues, it contained "many errors" which meant it was "unsafe to use it as a source for the debt markets."