This timely, lively, and insightful book considers the complexity of contemporary global politics and poses some of the most profound empirical and normative questions of our time—particularly how people will be organized politically and will govern their affairs in the 21st century. Examining humanity's transitional state "between two epochs" (the Westphalian and post-Westphalian), the book helps students get a handle on their world, engaging them in critical reflections on broad trends that are likely to shape the human condition. Written in a stimulating, reader-friendly style, it looks at the challenge of making sense today out of what seem to be not merely complex trends but contradictory, paradoxical ones.