The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson

In 1937 Ida Mae Gladney left Mississippi for Chicago. In 1945 George Starling left Florida for New York City. In 1953 Robert Pershing Foster left Louisiana for Los Angeles.

They were part of the Great Migration. From 1915 to 1970 almost six million black citizens left the south for northern and western cities looking for better lives. Wilkerson’s monumental book gives us for the first time a history of this remarkable movement.

The book is long but eminently readable, due to Wilkerson’s approa...