The cosmopolites are literally citizens of the world, from the Greek word
kosmos, meaning world, and polites, or citizen. Garry Davis, aka World
Citizen No. 1, and creator of the World Passport, was a former Broadway
actor and World War II bomber pilot who renounced his American citizenship
in 1948 as a form of protest against nationalism, sovereign borders, and
war. Today there are cosmopolites of all stripes, rich or poor, intentional
or unwitting, from 1-percenters who own five passports thanks to tax-havens
to theBidoon, the stateless people of countries like the United Arab
Emirates. Journalist Atossa Abrahamian, herself a cosmopolite, travels
around the globe to meet the people who have come to embody an increasingly
fluid, borderless world. Along the way you are introduced to a colorful
cast of characters, including passport-burning atheist hackers, the new
Knights of Malta, California libertarian seasteaders, who are residents
of floating city-states,Bidoons, who have been forced to be citizens of the
island nation Comoros, entrepreneurs in the business of buying and selling
passports, cosmopolites who live on a luxury cruise ship calledThe World,
and shady businessmen with ties to Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.