That a passport is needed for international travel is now so well understood that the matter is hardly ever given a second thought. Yet passports in the contemporary sense are actually of relatively recent origin, and in the 1920s, the government's growing insistence that travelers carry them led to a public backlash that newspapers labeled “the passport question.”

The resistance to passports reflected both practical concerns and philosophical ones (proving one's identity, it was felt, was something only criminals, immigrants, lunatics, and the poor needed to do). And yet, by the early 1930s, debate over the issue had ceased: passports would be carried, and by all.

In retrospect, the evolution of the passport did not take very long, nor was it very difficult—in less than a century, it moved from ad hoc certificate to universal requirement. Yet the actual journey was anything but smooth. In The Passport in America: The History of a Document, Craig Robertson, an assistant professor of communication studies at Northeastern University, retraces the trip. His purpose in doing so (in addition to the fact that no one else has) is to examine the implications of the government's decision to construct an “official” identity for each of us.

The book opens with the story of a Danish citizen who, while visiting Germany in 1923, shaved off his prominent mustache. When he later tried to exit the country, he was detained because he no longer resembled his passport. After being harshly interrogated (and mistaken for a famous international swindler), the man grew back his mustache and was allowed to leave.

By the time of this encounter, the battle over the passport question was in full swing. Yet the outcome of the fight was never in doubt. Society had changed, and the previous methods of identifying individuals—collective memory of the community, oral testimony, and reputation—were simply insufficient. What was needed was a bureaucratic solution that would standardize the process of determining whether or not a person was who he or she claimed to be.

As Robertson notes, it is not possible to pinpoint just when the “modern” passport was born, although he dates its beginnings to the 1840s, when increases in industrialization and immigration, coupled with improvements in international travel, first created a need for accurate recordkeeping. Up until then, the government had no real reason to know who was at—or within—its borders and, in fact, did not know (except to the extent that the census shed light on such matters). But as the slave question, frontier expansion, and foreign trade grew in importance, so did the government's need to gain control over its borders. And the passport was one means of doing so.

It is from this beginning that the modern passport springs, hurried along by both the Civil War and World War I. In telling the story of the passport, Robertson divides his book into two parts. Part I (chapters 1–7) discusses the physical attributes of the passport (e.g., photograph, signature, and wording). Part II (chapters 8–11) then delves into the actual use of the passport, with particular attention paid to “dubious citizens” and “suspicious people.” A concluding section brings the story up to the present and the passage of the REAL ID Act of 2005.

The book ends by returning to the tale of the Danish citizen who cut off his mustache. In deciding that he was not who he said he was because his physical appearance did not match his passport, a crucial reordering had occurred. As Robertson explains (251), the question was no longer “whether [the passport] was an accurate representation of the person presenting it. Rather, the people presenting a passport had to convince the official that they were the document.”

Robertson is troubled by this transformation and believes it puts a weight on the document that it cannot bear (251): “To give the passport a history as an identification document is to argue that this form of identification and the ‘official identity’ it produced in the name of the modern nation–state is not self-evident in either its history or its function.”

Whether one agrees with Robertson, however, is largely immaterial. After 9/11, it is clear that Americans (whether or not they have a passport) have an official identity that is constructed by the government and used for myriad purposes (the no-fly lists maintained by the Department of Homeland Security being but one example).

In fact, it would have been better if Robertson had not freighted his book with such observations. The text is at its best when it is simply telling the story of the passport (Robertson deftly weaves together the numerous legal challenges, policy shifts, and human dramas that have shaped it) and goes off the rails whenever it tries for a bigger point. Even with such flaws, the work is engrossing, the notes and bibliography are exhaustive, the index is helpful, and the numerous pictures represent a nice bonus.