License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport

This surprising global history of an indispensable document reveals how the passport has shaped art, thought, and human experience while helping to define the modern world.

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....