Isabel Wilkerson won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her reporting as Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times. The award made her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. She won the George Polk Award for her coverage of the Midwest and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for her research into the Great Migration. She has lectured on narrative writing at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and as the James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism at Emory University. She is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University. During the Great Migration, her parents journeyed from Georgia and southern Virginia to Washington, D.C., where she was born and reared. This is her first book.
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MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE WINNER • HEARTLAND AWARD WINNER • DAYTON
LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALIST
“A landmark piece of nonfiction . . . sure to hold many
surprises for readers of any race or experience….A mesmerizing book
that warrants comparison to The Promised Land, Nicholas Lemann’s
study of the Great Migration’s early phase, and Common Ground, J.
Anthony Lukas’s great, close-range look at racial strife in
Boston….[Wilkerson’s] closeness with, and profound affection for,
her subjects reflect her deep immersion in their stories and allow
the reader to share that connection.” —Janet Maslin, The New York
Times
“The Warmth of Other Suns is a brilliant and stirring epic, the
first book to cover the full half-century of the Great Migration…
Wilkerson combines impressive research…with great narrative and
literary power. Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what
John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his fiction masterpiece, The
Grapes of Wrath; she humanizes history, giving it emotional and
psychological depth.” —The Wall Street Journal
“[A] massive and masterly account of the Great Migration….A
narrative epic rigorous enough to impress all but the crankiest of
scholars, yet so immensely readable as to land the author a future
place on Oprah’s couch.” —The New York Times Book Review (Cover
Review)
“[A] deeply affecting, finely crafted and heroic book. .
. .Wilkerson has taken on one of the most important
demographic upheavals of the past century—a phenomenon whose
dimensions and significance have eluded many a scholar—and told it
through the lives of three people no one has ever heard of….This is
narrative nonfiction, lyrical and tragic and fatalist. The story
exposes; the story moves; the story ends. What Wilkerson urges,
finally, isn’t argument at all; it’s compassion. Hush, and listen.”
—Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
"The Warmth of Other Suns is epic in its reach and in its
structure. Told in a voice that echoes the magic cadences of Toni
Morrison or the folk wisdom of Zora Neale Hurston’s collected oral
histories, Wilkerson’s book pulls not just the expanse of the
migration into focus but its overall impact on politics,
literature, music, sports — in the nation and the world." —Los
Angeles Times
“One of the most lyrical and important books of the season."
—Boston Globe
“[An] extraordinary and evocative work.” —The Washington Post
“Mesmerizing. . .” —Chicago Tribune
“Scholarly but very readable, this book, for all its rigor, is so
absorbing, it should come with a caveat: Pick it up only when you
can lose yourself entirely.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
"[An] indelible and compulsively readable portrait of race, class,
and politics in 20th-century America. History is rarely distilled
so finely.” —Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A)
“An astonishing work. . . . Isabel Wilkerson delivers! . . . With
the precision of a surgeon, Wilkerson illuminates the stories of
bold, faceless African-Americans who transformed cities and
industries with their hard work and determination to provide their
children with better lives.” —Essence
“Isabel Wilkerson’s majestic The Warmth of Other Suns shows that
not everyone bloomed, but the migrants—Wilkerson prefers to think
of them as domestic immigrants—remade the entire country, North and
South. It’s a monumental job of writing and reporting that lives up
to its subtitle: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.” —USA
Today
“[A] sweeping history of the Great Migration. . . . The Warmth of
Other Suns builds upon such purely academic works to make the
migrant experience both accessible and emotionally compelling.”
—NPR.org
“The Warmth of Other Suns is a beautifully written, in-depth
analysis of what Wilkerson calls “one of the most underreported
stories of the 20th century. . . A masterpiece that sheds
light on a significant development in our nation’s history.” —The
San Jose Mercury News
“The Warmth of Other Suns is a beautifully written book that, once
begun, is nearly impossible to put aside. It is an unforgettable
combination of tragedy and inspiration, and gripping subject matter
and characters in a writing style that grabs the reader on Page 1
and never let’s go. . . . Woven into the tapestry of [three
individuals] lives, in prose that is sweet to savor, Wilkerson
tells the larger story, the general situation of life in the South
for blacks. . . . If you read one only one book about history this
year, read this. If you read only one book about African Americans
this year, read this. If you read only one book this year, read
this.” —The Free Lance Star, Fredericksburg, Va.
"A truly auspicious debut. . . . The author deftly
intersperses [her characters'] stories with short
vignettes about other individuals and consistently provides the
bigger picture without interrupting the flow of the
narrative…Wilkerson’s focus on the personal aspect lends her book a
markedly different, more accessible tone. Her powerful storytelling
style, as well, gives this decades-spanning history a welcome
novelistic flavor. An impressive take on the Great
Migration." —Kirkus, Starred Review
“[A] magnificent, extensively researched study of the great
migration… The drama, poignancy, and romance of a classic immigrant
saga pervade this book, hold the reader in its grasp, and resonate
long after the reading is done.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Not since Alex Haley’s Roots has there been a history of equal
literary quality where the writing surmounts the rhythmic soul of
fiction, where the writer’s voice sings a song of redemptive glory
as true as Faulkner’s southern cantatas.” —The San Francisco
Examiner
“Profound, necessary and an absolute delight to read.” —Toni
Morrison
“The Warmth of Other Suns is a sweeping and yet deeply personal
tale of America’s hidden 20th century history - the long and
difficult trek of Southern blacks to the northern and western
cities. This is an epic for all Americans who want to understand
the making of our modern nation.” —Tom Brokaw
“A seminal work of narrative nonfiction. . . . You will never
forget these people.” —Gay Talese
“With compelling prose and considered analysis, Isabel Wilkerson
has given us a landmark portrait of one of the most significant yet
little-noted shifts in American history: the migration of
African-Americans from the Jim Crow South to the cities of the
North and West. It is a complicated tale, with an infinity of
implications for questions of race, power, politics, religion, and
class—implications that are unfolding even now. This book
will be long remembered, and savored.” —Jon Meacham
“Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns is an American
masterpiece, a stupendous literary success that channels the social
sciences as iconic biography in order to tell a vast story of a
people's reinvention of itself and of a nation—the first complete
history of the Great Black Migration from start to finish, north,
east, west.” —David Levering Lewis
“Isabel Wilkerson’s book is a masterful narrative of the rich
wisdom and deep courage of a great people. Don’t miss it!”
—Cornel West
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