Chicago, one of the great receiving stations of the Great Migration, has chosen WARMTH as the One Book/One Chicago Read for 2013/2014. Many thanks to the Chicago Public Library and to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, for devoting a full year to the enduring themes of freedom and social justice embodied by this migration. Looking forward to a continuing celebration of the culture and history of a movement that changed America.

The Warmth of Other Suns is released today in both paperback and audio editions….

The Warmth of Other Suns wins Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, along with John Edgar Wideman for Lifetime Achievement and Nicole Krauss for Fiction. Previous winners include: Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Gunnar Myrdal, Nadine Gordimer, Martin Luther King Jr. and other luminaries who have written on issues of social justice.

The Warmth of Other Suns named a finalist for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an international award for literature, inspired by the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the War in Bosnia.

The Warmth of Other Suns is one of three books President Obama took with him on vacation to Martha’s Vineyard. The two others were novels, Cutting for Stone and To the End of the Land. Made news around the world — from Poland to Vietnam.

The Warmth of Other Suns named winner of the 2011 Heartland Prize for Nonfiction. Fiction winner: Jonathan Franzen for Freedom. Previous winners include: Studs Terkel, Eric Larsen, Tim O’Brien, Jane Smiley, Annie Proulx, Taylor Branch, Ann Patchett, Alice Sebold, Rebecca Skloot. Granted by Chicago Tribune for books that “reinforce and perpetuate the values of heartland America.”

The Warmth of Other Suns wins the 2011 Hillman Book Prize for “an unforgettable portrait of race, class and politics in 20th century America.” Previous winners: Taylor Branch, Thomas Friedman, Arthur Schlesinger, John Kenneth Galbraith, Tracy Kidder and others for exemplary journalism that fosters social and economic justice.

The Warmth of Other Suns was named winner of the 2011 Mark Lynton History Prize, bestowed by Columbia and Harvard universities. Judges’ citation: “Wilkerson has created a brilliant and innovative paradox: the intimate epic…. This towering work rests on a trio of unforgettable biographies.… In powerful, lyrical prose that combines the historian’s rigor with the novelist’s empathy, Wilkerson’s book changes our understanding of the Great Migration and indeed of the modern United States.”

The Warmth of Other Suns won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction at the March 10, 2011, ceremony in New York. Previous NBCC winners include E. L. Doctorow, Frank McCourt, Ian McEwan, Edward P. Jones, Junot Diaz, Marilynne Robinson, Anne Fadiman, Dexter Filkins, Philip Gourevitch, among others. For more information:  www.bookcritics.org

Isabel Wilkerson spoke about the role and impact of the Great Migration at Yale University on January 18, 2011. To view Video: Yale University