The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

This book tells the story of the Great Migration (the movement of African Americans out of the South to cities in the North and West from about 1915 to 1975) through the lives of three of its participants: Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster. The individual lives were fascinating, the story of the Great Migration definitely needs to be told in a comprehensive way, and it was incredibly clear that Ms. Wilkerson has done incredible research to get the book off the ground. Still, I found the book a bit clunky--there was a lot of back-and-forth between the three stories (which weren't always presented in strict chronological order) and editorial here's-what-was-happening-specifically segments. I also felt that the prose was embroidered a bit (possibly to make the book more appealing to a non-academic audience). In principle, I feel that making history relevant to the widest possible audience is essential. In the case of this book, the prose style at times turned me off. Still, I was impressed by the depth of research and the book's ambitions (which were fulfilled in its contents, even if I wish the form had been more to my liking).