Passport: A Cultural History from Antiquity to the Present Day

How has the passport influenced art and thinking? How has it changed human self-awareness? With the passion of a researcher, Patrick Bixby examines the prehistory, emergence, and current status of the passport, taking the reader on a journey from the pharaohs of Egypt to modern refugee camps. Along the way, he eagerly looks into the passports of famous writers, artists, musicians, directors, and politicians: Vladimir Nabokov and Salman Rushdie, Joyce and Marc Chagall, Byron and Gertrude Stein, Lenin and Hannah Arendt, and more. The book is filled with personal stories, discussions of identity, mobility, citizenship, and state power, as well as numerous examples from cinema, literature, and painting.