Isabel Wilkerson wrote an amazing book called The Warmth of Other Suns, chronicling the lives of three Black Americans who migrated to the north and west in a wave of six million in a mass exodus called the Great Migration. She drew on over 1200 interviews with Black Southerners who chose to pick up and make new lives and stories for themselves and their families.

It was kicked off by World Wars I and II, and has given us a bunch of amazing stuff - like sublime music, poignant literature, and an incredibly human story.

...oh, and cool Black Midwesterners like me.

Warmth won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the 2011 Hillman Book Prize, the 2011 Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities, the 2011 Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize, the Independent Literary Award for Nonfiction, the Horace Mann Bond Book Award from Harvard University, the NAACP Image Award for best literary debut and was shortlisted for the 2011 Pen-Galbraith Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.*

*An excerpt from the Author Bio on Isabel Wilkerson's website