What criteria should determine which states the international community recognizes? Should we set strict minimum standards or be flexible in the interest of bringing lagging states along in their progress toward justice? Should we recognize states that have seceded from other states, and under what conditions? These are the weighty questions Naticchia (California State Univ., San Bernardino) addresses in this work. Beginning from a starting point of John Rawls’s Law of Peoples, the author first provides a multichapter review of the criticism of Rawls’s social contract theory of international justice. The author concedes much of the criticism and, as a solution, seeks to transform Law of Peoples into a theory of state recognition rather than of international justice. While the review of criticism may be useful to the unfamiliar, it is a lengthy and arguably unnecessary windup for a project that stands on its own merits. That is, the author largely succeeds in creating a Rawlsian theory of recognition. He does so, insightfully, by placing recognition in the realm of Rawls’s nonideal theory for, if the community of nations were operating in the ideal realm, the question of recognition would be moot. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.