Great Migrations

An illustrated companion to the seven-hour National Geographic Channel special miniseries of the same title. It includes 250 breathtaking photos and describes all of the epic animal dramas that will be featured in the series.

"A National Georgraphic Channel global television event"--Cover.

Finalist for the 2021 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A Library Journal Best Science & Technology Book of 2020 A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2020 2020 Goodreads Choice Award Semifinalist in Science & Technology A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting--predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change. 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 patterns as unprecedented, provoking fears of the spread of disease and conflict and waves of anxiety across the Western world. On both sides of the Atlantic, experts issue alarmed predictions of millions of invading aliens, unstoppable as an advancing tsunami, and countries respond by electing anti-immigration leaders who slam closed borders that were historically porous. But the science and history of migration in animals, plants, and humans tell a different story. 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 necessary as breathing. Climate changes triggered the first human migrations out of Africa. Falling sea levels allowed our passage across the Bering Sea. Unhampered by barbed wire, migration allowed our ancestors to people the planet, catapulting us into the highest reaches of the Himalayan mountains and the most remote islands of the Pacific, creating and disseminating the biological, cultural, and social diversity that ecosystems and societies depend upon. In other words, migration is not the crisis--it is the solution. Conclusively 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 in which migration is not a source of fear, but of hope.

This exciting reader follows the story of the longest and the most demanding elephant migration on the planet. Living at the furthest corners of the hot and dry Sahara Desert, the very margins of where elephants can survive, hundreds of these great creatures make a dangerous but necessary journey as their main source of food and water dries up and they must go in search of more. Battling 120-degree heat, sandstorms, and fierce thunderstorms, these amazing animals travel 35 miles a day in a race against time in search of the bare essentials of life. National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources. Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.

Every year like clockwork, animals both big and small are driven by a natural instinct to move, in order to survive. On both land and sea, they fight the odds and the forces of nature to breed, feed, or lead and carry on for future generations. This reader is an introduction to the treacherous trek of the zebra, walrus, and Christmas Island red crab to overcome obstacles that include hungry cheetahs, stinging yellow crazy ants, and even their fellow species to make the often impossible journey of their lives. National Geographic supports K-12 educators with ELA Common Core Resources. Visit www.natgeoed.org/commoncore for more information.

Read and discover all about great animal migrations. Why do animals migrate? How do they find their way? Read and discover more about the world! This series of non-fiction readers provides interesting and educational content, with activities and project work.

“The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People, which won the 1952 Pulitzer for history, was aimed at an audience of general readers in making his case that immigration — more than the frontier experience, or any other episode in its past — was the continuing, defining event of American history. Dispensing with footnotes and writing in a lyrical style, Dr. Handlin emphasized the common threads in the experiences of the 30 million immigrants who poured into American cities between 1820 and the turn of the century. Regardless of nationality, religion, race or ethnicity, he wrote, the common experience was wrenching hardship, alienation and a gradual Americanization that changed America as much as it changed the newcomers. The book used a form of historical scholarship considered unorthodox at the time, employing newspaper accounts, personal letters and diaries as well as archives.” — Paul Vitello, The New York Times “[Oscar Handlin] has charged his pages with poetry and feeling... The Uprooted is history with a difference — the difference being its concern with men’s hearts and souls no less than an event.” — Milton Rugoff, The New York Times “Seldom in our historical literature have we been offered such detailed, realistic pictures of what it meant to come to the New World. The crossing itself, the struggle to make a living in the New World, the problems of housing, social fellowship, religion, adjustment to democracy — a chapter is devoted to each of these. The social and political pressures, the friction and misunderstanding between generations, the awful realization that the adjustment was too great — this reviewer knows of no book that captures these moods and situations with such sympathy and understanding... This is not, in either style or format, conventional or scholarly history... The style is not pedantic or heavy. The author is imaginative, sensitive, understanding. A tremendous amount of research and real depth of understanding lies behind the book.” — Ralph Adams Brown, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “[S]trong stuff, handled in a masterly and quite moving way.” — The New Yorker “This is a book of fundamental importance. For the first time it attempts to get at the inner meaning of an experience crucial in the development of the United States. It makes the attempt with a back- ground of imaginative research, a perceptiveness, and a literary skill rare in the modern writing of history... no one should attempt serious work in modern American history without fully reckoning with The Uprooted.” — Eric F. Goldman, The Journal of Southern History “Dr. Handlin’s The Uprooted deserves every bit of the praise and honors that have been heaped upon it. Dealing with an important area of American history without deviating from scholarly standards, the author succeeded in penetrating the façade of historical data to reach the drama of the historical process. The book is not only beautifully written and alive with human interest, but also highly pertinent to current social and political events in the United States... [Dr. Handlin] has handled his material magnificently, and every immigrant and descendant of an immigrant — that is, every American — ought to read this book in order the better to understand himself and his ancestors.” — Solomon Grayzel, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society “[T]he best historical interpretation of the inner meaning of migration.” — John Higham, Pacific Historical Review “Dr. Handlin has discharged his responsibility admirably. An able scholar of immigration history, Dr. Handlin, in the present work... reveals a mastery of historical data and rare insight and understanding of the manifold problems of the immigrant. The book is beautifully written, and many passages are truly moving... Americans would understand their country better if they would read this book and benefit from the humane spirit in which it is written.” — Carl Wittke, The New England Quarterly

Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America