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highly recommended |
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize?winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an ?unrecognized immigration? within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
From the Hardcover edition.
A Unique View of an Epic Exodus 
This is a fascinating and novel approach to history. Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of the Great Migration (African Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South) principally through the biographies of three representative participants: Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Robert P. Foster, M.D. Eschewing a more traditional, wide-angle view of history, Wilkerson instead elevates anecdote to its rightful place and give us an unsentimental, yet compassionate and artfully empathetic account of the Migration from the perspective of those who lived it. The experience of reading "The Warmth of Other Suns" is akin to reading three biographies at once; each one gently extracting a personal investment from the reader, thereby evoking a connection between past and present that is the hallmark of great history.
A GREAT READ!
I am about one hundred pages into this book, and I wish the whole world would stop and let me finish it. The three main stories are quite compelling, but even more amazing is the way the author weaves in information from the thousand some other interviews she did, plus the extensive research.
Just imagine how different this country would be if the indignities and insanity of Jim Crow had not existed, or had been less. It's mind-boggling. I think this is an amazing work, an intellectual feat, and certainly deserves the Pulitzer prize. I plan on coming back and writing more after I've read more, but so far, so GREAT.
Warmed My Heart and Fired My Soul
First, I would like to thank Isabel Wilkerson for writing this great piece of literature. Not only is this book a great reference from a historical perspective regarding the exodus of nearly six million Black Americans from the South to cities in the Northeast, Midwest and West, but it is also an emotional and gut wrenching tale of the lives of three Black Americans who made the journey.
My own parents migrated from Alabama and Tennessee in the early thirties and late forties and they never thought twice about ever going back.
Excellent!
Excellent! Excellent! This is a very enjoyable read. It is the best book so far on the Great Migration.
Don't be discouraged by the 500 hundred pages. She tells the story so well, you want be able to put the book down and want get bored.
Haunting 
Very informative, very haunting book. The story of the migration of southern blacks north and west is also the story of why they yearned to leave the total suppression of the south, and it's difficult to read in this day and age. Raised in northern California and having a black classmate, it was difficult for me to read the way life was for our black citizens. And yet, I couldn't put the book down, because I wanted these refugees from their home area to find dignity and work-related rewards for their efforts. Well-written.
reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
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we recommend
A surprisingly practical seeming guidebook.
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