Cosmopolitarism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

“A brilliant and humane philosophy for our confused age.”—Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell

Drawing on a broad range of disciplines, including history, literature, and philosophy—as well as the author's own experience of life on three continents—?Cosmopolitanism? is a moral manifesto for a planet we share with more than six billion strangers.

Anthony Appiah's landmark work, featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, challenges the separatist doctrines espoused in books like Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. Reviving the ancient philosophy of "cosmopolitanism", a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence on the ethical legacies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Women the world over are brought up to hope, even expect, to find the man of their dreams and live happily ever after. When Stephanie Wood meets a former architect turned farmer she embarks on an exhilarating romance with him. He seems compassionate, loving, truthful. They talk about the future. She falls in love. She also becomes increasingly beset by anxiety at his frequent cancellations, no-shows and bizarre excuses. She starts to wonder, who is this man?