Why has an academic book with a title that includes this mix—“Jim Crow,” “mass incarceration,” and “colorblindness”— resonated with the public? Clearly, Alexander has hit a nerve. Something profound is happening in American society.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin was first published in 1963 during the emerging Civil Rights Movement and was an instant best seller. A brilliant social critic, public intellectual, and interpreter of racial myths and beliefs, Baldwin captured the zeitgeist of a country riven by race. Without prejudice or fear, he deconstructed the institution of racism in America.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a magisterial book examining the Great Migration from the South that began during World War I and lasted until the 1970s. According to Wilkerson, the Great Migration changed the dynamic between the North and the South in ways no one could have imagined.