Today traditional inter-state security concerns coexist with new security preoccupations. The reviewed book (Challenge and Change. Global Threats and the State in Twenty-first Century International Politics. Ed. by Norma C. Noonan, Vidya Nadkarni) addresses the question whether the twenty-firstcentury state would be able to address the challenges posed by rapid world change. The founding premise of the book is that while the challenges we face transcend political borders, the answers can only be generated within the context of the prevailing inter-state system and international organizations. In this new political universe, concepts such as polarity, power, alliances, and deterrence that dominated the analysis of international relations during the Cold War, enable us to capture only a narrow slice of a twenty-firstcentury world buffeted by transnational forces that defy simple inter-state logics. This book grapples with the tension between the continued relevance of the state and the increasing inability of the state to deal unilaterally with traditional and non-traditional challenges. Standard foreign policy instruments of states can no longer be deployed successfully to resolve the range of global challenges that confront us. Some form of global governance to tackle transnational problems is the sine qua non of world order. Whether the major powers are able and willing to lead us into this new world is the abiding question of the twenty-first century.