In May 2019, Dan Maxwell and Kirsten Gelsdorf published their new book: Understanding the Humanitarian World. This book highlights the origins, growth, and specific challenges to, humanitarian action and examine why the contemporary system functions as it does. The authors outline the main actors, explore how they are organized, and look at the ways they plan and carry out their operations. Interrogating major contemporary debates and controversies in the humanitarian world, and the reasons why actions undertaken in its name remain the subject of so much controversy, the authors provide an important overview of the contemporary humanitarian system and the ways it may develop in the future.