ASU Book Group: ‘License to Travel’ by Patrick Bixby

The ASU Book Group's October 2024 reading selection is "License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport” by Patrick Bixby. The book group is open to all in the ASU community and meets monthly from noon to 1 p.m. with two different options for attendance: either in-person at Hayden Library, room 317* or virtually on Zoom. Registration is required for online attendance.

In-person attendees are invited to join the author for lunch after at the University Club, no-host.

Haven't read the book? Come anyway! Authors are always present.

*Note new in-person location for 24-25.

Synopsis

In “License to Travel,” Patrick Bixby takes the reader on a journey from pharaonic Egypt and Han-dynasty China to the passport controls and crowded refugee camps of today. “The book tells stories in a way that many other kinds of historical documents don’t,” said Bixby, an associate professor of English in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, “because it comes along with someone as they travel, and travel is generative of stories. It tells us where someone went often, it tells us why they went there, and it tells us where they weren’t able to go.”

About the book group

The ASU Book Group meetings and selections for 2024–25 are:

• Nov. 21 - “Elvis and the Colonel” by Marshall Terrill

• Dec. - no meeting

• Jan. 30 - “The Nonconformists” by Brian Goodman

• Feb. 27 - "My Heart Is Bound Up with Them” by David Martinez

• Mar. 27 – TBD 

• Apr. 24 – “Mindscape of the Land” by Ryan Mores

The ASU Book Group is sponsored as a community outreach initiative hosted in partnership between the Department of English and ASU Library.