Absolutely marvelous book that taught me a great deal not only about its most immediate subject, the Great Migration, but about race in America more generally. You learn an awful lot reading this — Wilkerson did an incredible amount of research — but it’s no textbook. Wilkerson uses the simple but effective device of choosing three people who left the South, and structuring her narrative around their life stories. So it’s as much a triple biography of three very interesting characters as it is a work of general history. Highly recommended.