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License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport Hardcover – October 25, 2022
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In License to Travel, Patrick Bixby takes the reader on a captivating journey from pharaonic Egypt and Han-dynasty China to the passport controls and crowded refugee camps of today. Along the way, you will:
- Peruse the passports of artists and intellectuals, writers and musicians, ancient messengers and modern migrants.
- See how these seemingly humble documents implicate us in larger narratives about identity, mobility, citizenship, and state authority.
- Encounter intimate stories of vulnerability and desire along with vivid examples drawn from world cinema, literature, art, philosophy, and politics.
- Witness the authority that travel documents exercise over our movements and our emotions as we circulate around the globe.
With unexpected discoveries at every turn, License to Travel exposes the passport as both an instrument of personal freedom and a tool of government surveillance powerful enough to define our very humanity.
- Print length248 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniversity of California Press
- Publication dateOctober 25, 2022
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.8 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-100520375858
- ISBN-13978-0520375857
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A comprehensive, insightful history. . . . Bixby offers up a formidable survey of this everyday artifact and how it defines individuals and affords varying degrees of privilege and freedom, depending on one’s place of birth." ― New York Times
"Neatly lays out the mighty power of the passport and the pains of passport inequality. . . . With License to Travel, Bixby also makes the argument that applying and carrying a passport is not just an administrative hoop that travelers must jump through: Having a passport gives us the freedom to travel—and the freedom to thrive." ― AFAR Magazine
"Read this book and you’ll never again treat your passport so casually." ― Geography Realm
"Bixby offers a new cultural history of the passport, exploring its pre-history, emergence and its current status today. This beautifully written and accessible book will be a great introduction for people wanting to learn more about passports and their politics of inclusion and exclusion." ― LSE Review of Books
"This readable narrative history will interest all who travel abroad as well as those denied the opportunity." ― CHOICE
"Charmingly written. . . . An appealing, accessible, and enlightening choice of reading on this subject." ― International Migration Review
From the Back Cover
"This book makes a delightful, thorough, and sprightly contribution to the fields of cultural studies, mobility studies, and travel philosophy. By bringing together texts across different fields and by seizing the timeliness of the current upheaval of travel during the Covid-19 pandemic, Bixby's book makes for an innovative and informative read around the charged topics of citizenship, belonging, identity, and borders. Employing an easy-to-follow voice and an invitingly open, inquisitive style, License to Travel draws readers into the voyages, conundrums, and passages of an eclectic array of characters and contexts."—Christopher Schaberg, author of Grounded: Perpetual Flight . . . and Then the Pandemic
"Bixby offers us a luminous cross-cultural history of the passport, that precious object that stands at the intersection of the personal and the political. This is an important book for anyone interested in histories of mobility and the politics of border crossing from ancient times to the present."—Deepika Bahri, author of Postcolonial Biology: Psyche and Flesh after Empire
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : University of California Press; First Edition (October 25, 2022)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 248 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0520375858
- ISBN-13 : 978-0520375857
- Item Weight : 13.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #961,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #109 in Emigration & Immigration Law (Books)
- #781 in Globalization & Politics
- #920 in Emigration & Immigration Studies (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Patrick Bixby is Professor of English at Arizona State University.
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This book focuses on the history and evolving use of passports and was supported by much material, many of which to me were digressions extending the book. I thought it could have covered the material in perhaps 50 pages, but it is a rambling book of 211 small-typed pages. Personally, I found the examples used to illustrate the points of little interest or importance.
For me, a slow and tedious read.