Why do some states command recognition while others, often equally powerful, remain marginal? In a world where many international rules and institutions lack credible enforcement, status becomes a crucial currency of global politics: it shapes who gets what, how much, and when. Status legitimizes and reinforces inequalities between states, even where formal rules suggest sovereign equality. This ambitious and conceptually elegant book tackles the fundamental question of how international status is produced and sustained. Marina Duque conceptualizes status as international recognition and operationalizes it through the network of embassies between states. Conventional wisdom suggests that status should follow state attributes, including economic power, military capabilities, or institutional strength. Yet even a cursory look at world politics suggests mismatches between states’ resources and their international standing – patterns the book tests systematically. Duque proposes that status is primarily relational. Its foundations lie in the historical formation of the international system during the nineteenth century, when industrialization and colonial expansion produced durable hierarchies between the ‘West’ and the rest. These hierarchies structured patterns of recognition and gradually decoupled status from the material resources. As a result, relational proximity to the Western core and alignment with its values became central determinants of status. The book also shows that these attributes are surprisingly difficult to acquire. Status-seeking states often undertake costly efforts to gain recognition – developing nuclear weapons or adopting Western-inspired human-rights conventions – yet such strategies rarely translate into higher status. Duque deploys an ingenious application of social network analysis to map how her theoretical predictions appear in observable diplomatic patterns. The result is an intellectually rich and empirically rigorous study that advances our understanding of hierarchy and recognition in international politics.