George Monbiot admits that as of 2003 he and the Global Justice Movement to which he belongs and to whom this book is addressed have misdiagnosed the cause of the current global sickness and consequently have offered the wrong prescriptions (p. 2). The problem which needs to be confronted, he says, is not economic globalization but the lack of democratic political globalization.

World Federalists who would like to know more about their roots have a new treasure here. The first sentence of this new two-volume work by a professional historian (who knows the movement from within as well as through intensive study) succinctly describes the whole: "This book is a history of the practical, political efforts to establish a constitutionally limited, democratically representative, federal world government in order to effectively abolish war."

This new book is a straightforward let's-look-at-the-arguments appeal to progressive thinkers to accept nothing less than a radically changed international system focused on enforceable global law as the only way to abolish war and militarism as well as really addressing other global problems such as limiting population growth, preventing and halting the spread of global epidemics, preserving the environment, dealing with the problem of poverty, and limiing the activities of global corporations.

Didier Jacobs, Special Advisor to the President of Oxfam America, puts forth the view that the democratic ideal--the view that all members of a community should have equal say in determining the policies of that community--is already at work producing effects in the global community. Jacobs believes that this democratic ideal which moved Britain toward greater political equality in the 19th century, is now being applied at the global level.  Global democracy is "an idea whose time has come" (p.