after country by confused customs officers, he declared for himself a world government. Until his death a few weeks ago, the expansion of that government was his credo. The World Government of World Citizens, claiming power everywhere but based in Vermont and Washington, D.C., issued passports, birth certificates, exit visas, and occasionally conducted elections. (“Dear World Citizen: As a candidate for World President, I hereby solicit your World Vote. A World Ballot is enclosed.”) It could claim nearly a million registered world citizens.

Davis’ ambitions for the world government were impressive. Having seen the dark side of nationalism from a Second World War bomber, he was determined to liberate humanity from its divisions, replacing sovereign nations with one sovereign leadership. Peace would follow, and with it, prosperity—not only wouldsuch...As a world sovereign, existing legally only in a worldly sense, I am able to give this point a legal existence.”

That metaphysical certainty—and the dream of a world economy that abolishes private interest—put Davis among the twentieth century’s multitude of utopians. Yet while the others measured their successes in mass graves, collective farms and Lebensraum, success for Davis was a fresh stamp in his World Passport from yet another bewildered official. He quickly came to learn, in declaring himself a sovereign government, the rough and tumble world that sovereign governments inhabit—he was imprisoned dozens of times, shipped back and forth between unwelcoming countries, and once spent weeks stuck on a bridge crossing from France to Germany, the Germans not letting him enter and the French not letting him