Rose Rosetree’s Reviews > The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration > Status Update

George Starling is such an honorable man, though he doesn't seem to get much credit from others or society.

His long-time friend moved South, before death, but not before forcing George to promise to sing a favorite hymn at the friend's funeral.

George kept that promise, though he didn't want to. Movingly recounted, in an understated manner, by magnificent Isabel Wilkerson.

I am going to miss reading this magnificent book by Isabel Wilkerson.

As an interviewer, as a historian, she has a uniquely deft touch, vividly portraying all her interview subjects.

Toward the end of this book, Amazing Isabel is tying it all together.

I recommend this book to EVERYONE who cares about human decency -- both speaking that way, acting that way, and evaluating when people do wrong toward us.

Again and again, I revise upward my admiration of the three refugees from the South (and their families) who are extensively profiled in this book.

This book by Isabel Wilkerson is a masterwork.

Altogether, Isabel Wilkerson has amassed a staggering data set about how very special those Great Migrators were, even if they didn't know it at the time, and even if others didn't recognize how special they were ... at the time.

For instance, more Black high school graduates came from the Jim Crow South, compared to:

Black residents who stayed put.
Or White residents in destination cities like Detroit and New York
Or Black natives of destination cities like Detroit and New York.

Just one example: Black refugees from the South to the North and West in America ...

They compared so favorably to Black Southerners who didn't leave,
and ALSO to White Americans in the North and West,
and also to Black Americans who were born in the North and West and lived with big city crime and drugs and violence.

I'm on CD 9, learning about the most fascinating sociological analyses of participants in The Great Migration.

These battered-down refugees from the Jim Crow South are the most resourceful, the best problem solvers, and THE BEST EDUCATED.


(The "60% done" is approximate, btw.)

One depressing story after another of American apartheid. (My word.) Certainly the Caste system works brilliantly too.

What I like most is how the three main people featured in this book managed to ENDURE it al.

Isabel Wilkerson's stories are pitch perfect. Never manipulative.

Yet the stories she chooses to tell after doing 1,000 interviews--they're so moving.

I'm learning so much. Seems to me, this is an important book for every American.