One of TIME's 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER

In this modern classic of narrative nonfiction, three young people set out on a perilous journey out of the Jim Crow South to the North and West in search of what the novelist Richard Wright called "the warmth of other suns."

Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster are among the six million African-Americans who fled the South during what would become known as the Great Migration, a watershed in American history.

Warmth interweaves their stories and those of others who made the journey with the larger forces and inner motivations that compelled them to seek refuge, and with the challenges they confronted upon arrival in the New World.

The Warmth of Other Suns became an instant New York Times bestseller and has reappeared multiple times since its release. It has been named to the New York Times Magazine’s Best Nonfiction of All Time.

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About the Author

Photo: Author Isabel Wilkerson

Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson devoted 15 years to the research and writing of The Warmth of Other Suns. She interviewed more than 1,200 people, unearthed archival works and gathered the voices of the famous and the unknown to tell the epic story of the Great Migration, one of the biggest underreported stories of the 20th Century and one of the largest migrations in American history.

The book was named to more than 30 Best of the Year lists, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors, and made national news when President Obama chose WARMTH for summer reading in 2011. In 2012, The New York Times named The Warmth of Other Suns to its list of the best nonfiction books of all time.

Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times, making 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 has appeared on national programs such as CBS' "60 Minutes," NPR's "Fresh Air" and PBS' "NewsHour" and "Charlie Rose Show." She had taught at Princeton University, Emory University and Boston University and has spoken at more than 100 universities in the United States and in Europe.

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Latest News

October 4, 2020 Warmth named to Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade

The faculty of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, along with distinguished outside judges, has selected The ‘Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade in the United States.’ The honorees were selected from a list of 122 nominations. Warmth was #2 on the list after Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations.

June 14, 2020 Oprah Winfrey calls new Wilkerson book the ‘END ALL, BE ALL’

The new book Caste is to be released in early August. It examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and delineated how today’s society is still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. “It will change the way you see what is systemic in our country,” Oprah said.

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