"Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked innovations. Did the benefits of guilds outweigh their costs? Analyzing thousands of guilds that dominated European economies from 1000 to 1880, The European Guilds uses vivid examples and clear economic reasoning to answer that question. Sheilagh Ogilvie's book features the voices of honorable guild masters, underpaid journeymen, exploited apprentices, shady officials, and outraged customers, and follows the stories of the "vile encroachers"--Women, migrants, Jews, gypsies, bastards, and many others--desperate to work but hunted down by the guilds as illicit competitors. She investigates the benefits of guilds but also shines a light on their dark side. Guilds sometimes provided important services, but they also manipulated markets to profit their members. They regulated quality but prevented poor consumers from buying goods cheaply. They fostered work skills but denied apprenticeships to outsiders. They transmitted useful techniques but blocked innovations that posed a threat. Guilds existed widely not because they corrected market failures or served the common good but because they benefited two powerful groups--guild members and political elites."--Rabat de la jaquette.

Ken Follet was a normal average person, a widow with one married daughter. When her two kids are abducted, abused and killed the daughter tries to kill herself. Ken decides to take the law into his own hands. He waits six brain festering years for the only man ever punished for the children's deaths to be released from prison Ken has his revenge. Finding that he has a hidden liking for violence Ken decides that this is his way forward. By starting the Guild, he brings down a reign of terror on a small city. In a very short time, the city is controlled by the Guild and for some reason petty crime almost stops. Can violence ever be a justified way of stopping violence? Would the police be able to act against a criminal group like the Guild? Would you be willing to go against the Guild if you found that they were working in your town? Could it ever happen?