Patriotism to the Earth - by Richard A Falk (Paperback)

About the Book

In another soon-to-be-classic, Richard Falk provides a hopeful call to action to avert sleepwalking toward a collective species death wish, and to reimagine allegiance to the nation state instead as a humane patriotism for sustainability and ecological viability.

Book Synopsis

In another soon-to-be-classic, Richard Falk provides a hopeful call to action to avert sleepwalking toward a collective species death wish, and to reimagine allegiance to the nation state instead as a humane patriotism for sustainability and ecological viability.

Review Quotes

At a time when the prevailing world order seems to promise only ecological catastrophe, economic impoverishment, tyranny, war, and the threat of nuclear annihilation, Richard Falk's Patriotism to the Earth provides crucial guidelines for halting and reversing the thrust to human self-annihilation. Falk presents a clearsighted alternative: A 'patriotism to the Earth' rooted in a vision of human solidarity and led by global social movements and civil society.

Richard Falk draws upon a lifetime of research and personal experience in international law and politics, to identify the form of global governance best suited to resolving the existential threats facing humanity. His message remains resolutely optimistic, in the belief that if we nurture global solidarity we might yet create a form of cosmopolitanism which could underpin the global governance that we need for a safe future.

Some day people will look back at Richard Falk as a prophet who had the moral courage, visionary imagination, and encyclopedic knowledge to critically assess world affairs and chart the requirements of a more just, ecologically wise, and flourishing future. This book is a gift. Falk and Milonova explain the indispensability of global solidarity for building a livable future and demonstrate how normative commitments are far from intellectual blinders but incisive tools for understanding the present and envisioning a better world. Monumental in scope yet poetically and humbly written, this book stands among the greats of global political thought and practice.

This book, carefully crafted and beautifully written, is a must read for all students and practitioners of world politics and for the concerned public as they consider the future of politics, society and our planet. Richard Falk, one of the world's great thinkers in international law and politics, demolishes the misplaced, often hypocritical claims of regressive, violent and reactionary modes of thought and practice of many ruling forces in world order today. Falk calls, convincingly, for a new "patriotism to the Earth", grounded in an ethics of ecological and social sustainability and political and humanitarian mobilization in the making of a new, more just and sustainable, world order.

About the Author

Richard A. Falk is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Emeritus at Princeton University, and was Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of The Nation and The Progressive, and Chair of the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is a former advisory board member of the World Federalist Institute and the American Movement for World Government. He served a six-year term as United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories. During 1999-2000, Falk worked on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo. He is the author of over twenty books.

Sasha Milonova is a political economist by training, and a writer, researcher, and activist. She has also produced an award-winning documentary short.