The Next Great Migration
The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move
The award-winning author of Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting–predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change.
“Illuminating…This work’s beguiling synergy of science, history, and contemporary politics is impressive enough, but it is this intuitive author’s captivating narration that makes this such a bracingly intelligent and important title.”
booklist, starred review
“A masterful survey of migration in both nature and humanity, countering some long-held misconceptions…[and] a valuable treatise on how humanity can “reclaim our history of migration” and adopt a more pan-global perspective
Publisher weekly, starred review
“Incisive…A scientifically sophisticated, well-considered contribution to the literature of movement and environmental change.”
Kirkus, starred review
“Rich with eclectic research and on-the-ground reporting, Shah’s book presents us with a dazzlingly original picture of our relentlessly mobile species. At a moment when migrants face walls of hatred, this is a story threaded with joy and inspiration.”
Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal
“Humans have always been a migratory species, and so are most other animals. In this striking look at a planet on the move, Sonia Shah provides a bold new way of looking at the ecological and political turbulence of our time–a vision that is as full of hope as it is of understanding.”
Charles Mann, New York Times bestselling author of 1491
“Linnaeus believed that species belonged wherever he found them. With wit and insight, Shah takes on the legacy of this idea as it came to dominate both scientific and geopolitical conceptions of the world – despite all evidence to the contrary. In vivid detail, The Next Great Migration unfolds a different conception of the relationship between life and place, one characterized by dynamic, almost continuous, processes of change. At once stunning in scope and intimate in its narrative unfolding, The Next Great Migration is a beacon for all those who strive to envision a future affected by climate change – a future in which migration is not a crisis but a solution.”
-Professor Anna J. Secor, Professor of Geography, Durham University; Editor, cultural geographies
The news today is full of stories of dislocated people on the move. Wild species, too, are escaping warming seas and desiccated lands, creeping, swimming, and flying in a mass exodus from their past habitats. News media presents this scrambling of the planet’s migration as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict, inciting waves of anxiety across the planet. On both sides of the Atlantic, experts issue alarmed predictions of millions of invading aliens, unstoppable as an advancing tsunami, and anti-immigration leaders slam closed borders that were historically porous.
But the science and history of migration in animals, plants, and humans tell a different story. New genetic techniques have revealed how deep into the past our story of migration runs. New navigational technologies have uncovered the scale and complexity of both human and wild movements around the globe. Far from being a disruptive behavior to be quelled at any cost, migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change, a biological imperative as natural as breathing. While the next great migration may not proceed fast enough to keep pace with our shifting climate, a growing body of evidence suggests that it may be our best shot at preserving biodiversity and resilient human societies.
Migration, in other words, is not the crisis. It’s the solution.
Flawlessly tracking the history of misinformation from the 18th century through today’s anti-immigration policies, The Next Great Migration makes the case for a future where immigration is not a source of fear, but of hope.
Published in the US by Bloomsbury USA; in the UK by Bloomsbury UK; in India by Bloomsbury India; in Turkey by Can Yayinlari; in Korea by Medici Media; in China by China Worker Publishing.
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Sonia Shah is a science journalist and the prize-winning author of Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the New York Public Library Award for Excellence in Journalism. She has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many others. Her TED talk, “Three Reasons We Still Haven’t Gotten Rid of Malaria,” has been viewed by more than one million people around the world. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
