A World beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State, Pierre Manent, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 216.

Pierre Manent begins his book with a quotation taken from Paul Claudel's Poetics, which poses the questions, “Where am I? What time is it?” and adds “these are the inexhaustible questions we ceaselessly ask the world” (1). In using the quotation, Manent sets the object of his book as an attempt to lay out the contemporary moment, to find our “bearings” as he states, in view of isolating the key elements that mark the internal and external developments of Western forms of representative democracy. Beyond drawing from the meaning taken from the quotation, one can only guess as to why Manent selected this particular passage to open his book. However, the choice is highly telling of the assessment that the book offers to its readers of the West's current political predicament.