Children of a Modest Star

Reviews / Votes

"The clarity in this analysis of the world governance system is truly powerful-it's a major contribution to our shared cognitive map of where we are now, and how we got here. Moving beyond diagnosis in a way that one hopes for but doesn't always see, Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman make specific and practical suggestions for action. This fills an urgent need of our time, which is for plans that can be put to use right now. Many books are important-this one is, I think, crucial." -Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The High Sierra: A Love Story and The Ministry for the Future

"Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman are willing to face down the challenge of getting specific about planetary governance while avoiding the specter of world government. They offer real ideas for how inhabitants of the planet can govern ourselves at multiple scales, in ways that really could enable us to survive and thrive." -Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America, and author of Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics

"Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman have written an extraordinarily important and much needed book. The world faces any number of vexing, potentially catastrophic planetary challenges, which our current governing practices and institutions are ill-suited to meet. Deeply researched and sharply argued, Children of a Modest Star explains why our current institutional architecture is inadequate, and lays out a bold, forward thinking, but plausible agenda to develop a new conceptual lens to generate the governing practices, processes, and policies we desperately need. This book could not be timelier." -Francis J. Gavin, Johns Hopkins University

"As intellectually resourceful as it is ambitious, Children of a Modest Star not only cuts cleanly through the obsolete assumptions that stultify much thinking about the present and future. It also offers, in our paralyzing moment of polycrisis, a bold and bracing account of what we can still do." -Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger: A History of the Present

"What would governance look like if our planetary condition was central rather than ancillary to our culture and politics? This is the question posed by the thought-provoking Children of a Modest Star. Our current systems of governance, premised on sovereign states, are fundamentally misaligned with the scale of the planetary problems we face. The solution, Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman suggest, is to develop a set of content-specific, task-oriented institutions at a variety of levels of governance, and to do this quickly, before it is too late." -Naomi Oreskes, co-author of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

"As an Earth scientist, I've been frustrated by the world's inability to prevent climate catastrophe. National governments cannot handle threats that transcend their boundaries, and existing international bodies lack the power to compel change. Children of a Modest Star defines institutions that can deal with the problems we face that, like climate change, require governance from local to planetary scales. This book is a great conversation starter." -Kate Marvel, senior climate scientist at Project Drawdown

"Blake and Gilman confront the [global] crises of our own time-led by global warming but compounded by other potentially catastrophic and interconnected planetary challenges-and explain why our contemporary institutional and governing practices are woefully ill-suited to the moment. They lay out a bold but plausible conceptual and political agenda to reform and reinvent governance to avoid planetary ruin." -War on the Rocks

"Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman of Los Angeles' Berggruen Institute argue for linking the governance of different cities to better address planetary concerns. They envision more powerful municipalities working in collaboration with each other and world institutions to address the problems our faltering nation-states have failed to resolve." -Joe Mathews, Zocalo Public Square

"Political scientists Blake (Contentious Rituals) and Gilman (Mandarins of the Future) ponder how to 'effectively manage planetary issues' in this sweeping polemic.... It's a stimulating argument." -Publishers Weekly

"This is a visionary book....[and] a mind opener. The possibilities it raises are as inspiring as they are challenging." -Erle C. Ellis, Science

"This book sets the bar high in its ambition to radically rethink the present world order based on sovereign national states.... Nothing is more needed in this situation than visions and dreams about alternatives. The future is not given from ideas about History in the singular and with a capital H. However, the alternative futures require work on them meaning that the visions should not remain dreams but initiate action. Children of a Modest Star is a very welcome contribution in this situation." -Bo Strath, Blogs on Planetary Perspectives

"The true bravery of these authors is in their proposition to imagine a better system that can better integrate various levels of governance with a focus on planetary flourishing and stability. We can only hope that the leaders of tomorrow see this as a guide to a better future and take seriously the criticisms and proposals set out by this book." -Daniel Weisz Argomedo, Small Wars Journal

"As Children of a Modest Star vividly explores, the essential transformation described in so many various ways adds up to a 'de-centering' of our self-perceptions of our role on the planet. We are quickly realizing that we are not outside the flows of life, but intimately part of them, even as we change the very nature of those flows." -Brett A. Hurt, Medium

"Children of a Modest Star... is a wonderful reflection on how we need to imagine a form of governance that has executive authority beyond the nation-state itself. [The authors are] struggling to find an effective way where different nations can come together to address issues like climate change and other issues that really cannot be managed by national governments alone. They're not promoting a world government, but they are suggesting a form of subsidiarity, a political concept where different areas of responsibility are nested in larger and larger ones.... [E]xtremely inspiring." -Stephen Batchelor

"By rethinking political institutions to align with Earth's systemic interdependence, the book highlights the urgent need for transformative action to preserve the planet's habitability for all life forms." -Janos Pasztor, former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change