The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010) is a historical study of the Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. The book was widely acclaimed by critics. Synopsis The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of the Great Migration, the movement of Black Americans out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast, and West from approximately 1915 to 1970. Throughout the twentieth century, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering cities, America and the American people. With 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. Title The title of the book derives from a poem by author Richard Wright, who himself moved from the South to Chicago, in the 1920s. The poem is excerpted here: Awards and honors TIME 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade New York Times bestseller (Nonfiction, 2010) New York Times Best Books of the Year (2010) New York Times Notable Book of the Year (Nonfiction, 2010) Salon Book Award (Nonfiction, 2010) Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Best Books (2010) National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction, 2011) ALA Notable Book (2011) Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Non-Fiction runner-up, 2011) Pen-Galbraith Literary Award (Shortlist, 2011) Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (2011) Heartland Prize (Nonfiction, 2011) Mark Lynton History Prize (2011) The Hillman Prize (2011) Hurston/Wright Award (2011) The Warmth of Other Suns was a New York Times and national best seller, garnering half a