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A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire

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The best thing that can be said about this book is that it exists; it's the only thing of its kind short of the Complete Peerage. The worst thing that can be said about it is almost everything else. The 1883 edition, with its supplement, picks up all those titles which had died out and therefore were not in the later editions of Burke's Peerage. Arrangement is by family name, rather than by title, so one does get a sense of the power the great families accumulated. The amount of narrative detail varies from almost nonexistant to extended Victorian hyperbole, dates are very spotty, and minor factual errors are rife. So use this to outline the rise and decline of a family and its branches, and then go to the Complete Peerage for reliable details.