For hundreds of thousands of years, the ability of Homo sapiens to travel across vast distances and adapt to new environments has been key to their survival as a species. Yet this deep migratory impulse is being tested like never before as governments build ever-stronger walls that adversely impact the lives of migrants and the well-being of our societies.

In The Shortest History of Migration, visionary thinker Ian Goldin chronicles the movement of peoples that spans every age and continent to arrive at the heart of what truly makes us human. He recounts strange, terrible and uplifting tales of migrants past and present, examining the legacies of empire, slavery and war. Learn about how the first humans originating in Africa populated the world; the exchange of knowledge, food, language and religion through migration, and the exploited migrant populations that built the modern Western world, only to be shut out of it.

Finally, Goldin turns his attention to today’s increasingly fragmented world, bringing together historical evidence and recent data to suggest how we might create a more humane future where we can reap the tremendous benefits that migration has to offer.