The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
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The Warmth of Other Suns
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Narrated by:
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Robin Miles
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Written by:
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Isabel Wilkerson
About this listen
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of Black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER
LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE WINNER
HEARTLAND AWARD WINNER
DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALIST
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times • USA Today • O: The Oprah Magazine • Amazon • Publishers Weekly • Salon • Newsday • The Daily Beast
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New Yorker • The Washington Post • The Economist • Boston Globe • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Entertainment Weekly • Philadelphia Inquirer • The Guardian • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Christian Science Monitor
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
With stunning 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.
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
©2010 Isabel Wilkerson (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.You may also enjoy...
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 439
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In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 64
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Smartly dressed and smiling, Canada’s black train porters were a familiar sight to the average passenger - yet their minority status rendered them politically invisible, second-class in the social imagination that determined who was and who was not considered Canadian. Drawing on the experiences of these influential black Canadians, Cecil Foster’s They Call Me George demonstrates the power of individuals and minority groups in the fight for social justice and shows how a country can change for the better.
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 10
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 70
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4 out of 5 stars
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Caste
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- Written by: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 530
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 439
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 435
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Very good, but some unnecessary chapters
- By Richard Morrison on 2020-09-13
Written by: Isabel Wilkerson
-
A Fever in the Heartland
- The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
- Written by: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Timothy Egan
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 5
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5
The Roaring Twenties—the Jazz Age—has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Compelling Look into a Dark Time American History
- By Margot on 2023-05-10
Written by: Timothy Egan
-
Notes of a Native Son
- Written by: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 19
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 13
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 13
Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of Black life and Black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era.
Written by: James Baldwin
-
They Call Me George
- The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada
- Written by: Cecil Foster
- Narrated by: Dillon Taylor
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 64
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Smartly dressed and smiling, Canada’s black train porters were a familiar sight to the average passenger - yet their minority status rendered them politically invisible, second-class in the social imagination that determined who was and who was not considered Canadian. Drawing on the experiences of these influential black Canadians, Cecil Foster’s They Call Me George demonstrates the power of individuals and minority groups in the fight for social justice and shows how a country can change for the better.
-
5 out of 5 stars
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Great Listen: My Father was a Sleeping Car Porter!
- By ColeeR on 2020-03-10
Written by: Cecil Foster
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Music Is History
- Written by: Ahmir Khalib Thompson, Questlove
- Narrated by: Questlove
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 10
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Story5 out of 5 stars 10
Best-selling author and Sundance award-winning director Questlove harnesses his encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and his deep curiosity about history to examine America over the past 50 years. Choosing one essential track from each year, Questlove unpacks each song’s significance, revealing the pivotal role that American music plays around issues of race, gender, politics, and identity.
-
5 out of 5 stars
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Music and history
- By snickels on 2023-11-16
Written by: Ahmir Khalib Thompson, and others
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Stamped from the Beginning
- The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
- Written by: Ibram X. Kendi
- Narrated by: Christopher Dontrell Piper
- Length: 19 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 70
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 70
Some Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first Black president spelled the doom of racism. In fact, racist thought is alive and well in America - more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, if we have any hope of grappling with this stark reality, we must first understand how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Most comprehensive book on Black History I have ever listened to
- By Sam on 2024-06-13
Written by: Ibram X. Kendi
What the critics say
What listeners say about The Warmth of Other Suns
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Janice A.
- 2021-10-05
Loved this book...heartfelt and endearing.
I lived this book. I wished I had learned about the great migration years ago. It adds much context to help understand black culture in America as it continues to evolve.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- JohnS
- 2020-06-23
Wonderful!
Very well written history. I liked this book a lot and do not hesitate in recommending it. The three main people portrayed are a reflection of human resiliency. This is a book that illustrates clearly the reasons for the current reconning.
The narration by Robin Miles is excellent.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Tressa
- 2022-10-08
echoes of oral storytelling
Listening to the voice of this author was important for me, tuning into the tone, energy and details of the different narratives drew me into a deeper way of *hearing what was being shared. I learned from her inflection and pacing, in ways that reading wouldn’t let me access. The audio book honours the gift and importance of oral telling a of personal stories- more than research, or a lens focusing on a time, reading this book with my ears was like company telling me their family’s story
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 2020-08-21
exceptional story
wonderfully presented, written and resesrched.
the best book that i have encountered in a long while.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Abubakarrkay
- 2021-06-11
Very Revealing
This narrative is worth listening to. I love this book and would wholeheartedly recommend it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Odessa
- 2021-05-24
Beautifully crafted masterpiece
This book is unique in its composition: A mix of story telling, fact and meaning seeking. I found the balance deeply compelling. The personal journeys of three people and their families mixed with quotes for both historic and contemporary scholarly articles complimented by the authors questions and conclusions gave me an unprecedented depth of feeling and understanding.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 2021-03-24
Beautiful
Heartbreaking, shocking, sad, heartmending, and then heart warming. Superbly written and wonderfully read. I know I will listen to it again.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Tim Kirker
- 2021-05-18
Fully Engaging History
Wilkerson’s history of the black migration in America is thorough and engrossing. The narrative is expertly crafted and the facts meticulously documented. It sheds particular light on individual lives affected by the migration with incredible detail and empathy. Robin Miles’ narration was ideally suited.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- clevrgrl
- 2020-09-02
Must read/listen
I’m not usually a big consumer of history books, but this one was exceedingly accessible and thoroughly enjoyable. The narrator was perfect. Absolutely recommended.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 2021-02-14
Exceptionally talented writer
Isabel Wilkerson is a great story teller. I wish other writers could make the content as engaging as she does. She needs to run classes on how to not let a book be boring.
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