... arresting.

... a deeply researched and counterintuitive history that much received wisdom about migration—human or otherwise—rests on a series of misconceptions.

... Shah explores the history of intellectual connections among all these migration phenomena, tackling with compassion and insight a deeply complex and challenging subject.

Shah’s overviews of the historical narratives of migration provide important context for our language related to migration. She demonstrates that much of our discourse as journalists, experts, and scholars has roots in mythologies shaped by nationalism and racism. The narratives of nativism and literally made-up theories should be disturbing and maybe will be to those readers who have never been exposed to them before.

In our moment of ecological and political turmoil, mass migration is often framed as a grave crisis.

Sonia Shah’s last two books...introduced her as a storyteller in a novel genre: travel books that went in search of the spread of disease - cholera in the former, malaria in the latter. That literature of track and trace, part detective story, part reportage, took Shah to remote corners of the world and to distant grid references of history. Her books were also prescient case studies of the way that human progress has been shaped by its love-hate relationship with microbes – how disease has caused empires to rise and fall and economies to stutter and implode.

Shah convincingly argues that politicians against immigration distort and misuse data to create unnecessary and cruel barriers. She tells gut-wrenching stories of struggling families on the move, and presents evidence that migrants are generally healthier and less apt to commit violent crimes than are the residents of the country they move to.

... a bracing book.

It would be better, Shah suggests, to drop the labels, recognize human beings as a migratory species, and build institutions around that fact. This is a far-reaching argument, yet when it comes to specifying what those institutions might look like, Shah has disappointingly little to say. The sole policy she endorses in her book is the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.

The statistics Ms. Shah marshals are eye-catching.

... this is a book that captivates and educates on so many levels.

Sonia Shah’s scientific and literary prowess can be felt in the way she dissects xenophobia as a crude immune response.

... an original take on the oft-stultifying debate about immigration, most frequently argued over by unbending stalwarts on opposite extremes, or sometimes quibbled over by noncommittal centrists.

[Shah's] compelling probe into these questions becomes a political history of the human urge to move from one place to another.

In the book, she documents the evolution of our understanding of migration. The scale of migration among animals, birds, and plants is so vast that it continues to mystify scientists. Shah discusses how early European explorers were shocked by the diversity of humans they encountered, and naturalists of the time developed taxonomies reinforcing the idea of the superiority of the European race. The first wedge between familiar and foreign was forged with science..

Shah has crafted an illuminating exploration of how the concept of migration for plants, animals, and humans has been politicized and distorted throughout history. Drawing from a wide range of sources, including the migration patterns of butterflies, lemmings, and coral, the writings of national security expert Robert D. Kaplan, and the conflicting research of taxonomist Carl Linnaeus and naturalist George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Shah provides an enormously readable survey of how migration has been researched, written about, and blatantly misinterpreted by those seeking justification for their often nativist goals.

... consists of a sequence of illustrative examples and heartfelt polemics, designed to demolish the arguments of those joyless and controlling types who, throughout history, have in Shah’s view elevated their prejudice against the lively and sometimes messy dynamics of the natural and human world into a series of scientific theories often presented as fact, and designed to project a much more fixed and rigid picture of how nature and humanity 'should' be.

... a thoughtful and thought-provoking defense of migration.

An interesting read that deals with a topic that is current and important to all. It will present a thoughtful challenge to many readers..

... an incisive examination of migration.

... a masterful survey of migration in both nature and humanity, countering some long-held misconceptions.