Editorial Reviews
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William Edward Burghardt Du
Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a
sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career
spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights
movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the
University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls
of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work;
its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring
true.
With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment
influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's
largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and
moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from
poverty, the neo slavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and
lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs"
that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained
in "On Booker T. Washington and Others," where Du Bois criticizes his famous
contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance
toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the
alleged inferiority of the Negro races," he writes, further complaining that
Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men
and American citizens." The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk,
though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the
black psyche's "double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar
sensation.... One ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro; two souls,
two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark
body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Thanks
to W.E.B. Du Bois' commitment and foresight--and the intellectual excellence
expressed in this timeless literary gem--black Americans can today look in
the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown, and beige
reflections.
The New York Times Book Review
Sentimental, poetical,
picturesque, the acquired logic of the evident attempt to be critically
fair-minded is strangely tangled with these racial characteristics and
racial rhetoric.
Book Description
W.E.B. Du Bois was the foremost
black intellectual of his time. The Souls of Black Folk (1903), his most
influential work, is a collection of fourteen beautifully written essays, by
turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical. Here, Du Bois records the
cruelties of racism, celebrates the strength and pride of black America, and
explores the paradoxical "double-consciousness" of African-American life.
"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line," he
writes, prophesying the struggle for freedom that became his life's work.
For the first time, the authoritative editions
of works by major American novelists, poets, scholars, and essayists
collected in the hardcover volumes of The Library of America are being
published singly in a series of handsome and durable paperback books. A
distinguished author has contributed an introduction for each volume, which
also includes a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an
essay on the choice of the text, and notes.
Download Description
First published in 1903, this
eloquent collection of essays exposed the magnitude of racism in society.
The book endures today as a classic document of American and political
history.
Ingram
No home library should be
without a copy of this fascinating, influential and important historical
document written by the noted African-American scholar and civil rights
activist.
Card catalog description
One of the most influential and
widely read texts in all of African American letters and history, The Souls
of Black Folk combines some of the most enduring reflections on black
identity, the meaning of emancipation, and African American culture. This
new edition reprints the original 1903 edition of W. E. B. Du Bois's classic
work with the fullest set of annotations of any version yet published,
together with two related essays, and numerous letters Du Bois received and
wrote concerning his widely read text. The introductory essay combines the
sensibilities of a historian and a philosopher to capture the contours of Du
Bois's life and writings along with the early-twentieth-century reception to
the book. Photographs, a chronology, questions for consideration, a
bibliography, and an index are also included.
From the Publisher
"The problem of the twentieth
century is the problem of the color line." Thus speaks W.E.B. Du Bois in
The Souls Of Black Folk, one of the most prophetic and influential works
in American literature. In this eloquent collection of essays, first
published in 1903, Du Bois dares as no one has before to describe the
magnitude of American racism and demand an end to it. He draws on his own
life for illustration, from his early experiences teaching in the hills of
Tennessee to the death of his infant son and his historic break with the
conciliatory position of Booker T. Washington.
Far ahead of its time, The Souls Of Black
Folk both anticipated and inspired much of the black conciousness and
activism of the 1960's and is a classic in the literature of civil rights.
The elegance of DuBois's prose and the passion of his message are as crucial
today as they were upon the book's first publication.
From the Back Cover
“One hundred years after
publication, there is in the entire body of social criticism still no more
than a handful of meditations on the promise and failings of democracy in
America to rival William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’s extraordinary collection
of fourteen essays.” —from the Introduction by David Levering Lewis
--
About the Author
W.E.B. Du Bois
(1868–1963), writer, civil rights activist, scholar, and editor, is one of
the most significant intellectuals in American history. A founding member of
the NAACP, editor for many years of The Crisis and three other
journals, and author of seventeen books, his writings, speeches, and public
debates brought fundamental changes to American race relations.
David Levering Lewis is Martin Luther King,
Jr., University Professor in the department of history at Rutgers
University. He won Pulitzer prizes for both volumes of his landmark
biography of W.E.B. Du Bois, along with many other awards, including the
Bancroft and Parkman prizes. He lives in Manhattan.
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