W E B Du Bois 1868 1919

This monumental biography--eight years in the research and writing--treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of W. E. B. Du Bois from renowned scholar David Levering Lewis, now in one condensed and updated volume William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America—was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator. Now, David Levering Lewis has carved one volume out of his superlative two-volume biography of this monumental figure that set the standard for historical scholarship on this era. In his magisterial prose, Lewis chronicles Du Bois's long and storied career, detailing the momentous contributions to our national character that still echo today. W.E.B. Du Bois is a 1993 and 2000 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction and the winner of the 1994 and 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

The second part of a biography of the African American author and scholar chronicles the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance, Du Bois's battle for equality and justice for African Americans, and his self-exile in Ghana.

This monumental biography by David Levering Lewis--eight years in the research and writing--treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how W.E.B. Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves.

The two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of W. E. B. Du Bois from renowned scholar David Levering Lewis, now in one condensed and updated volume William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America—was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator. Now, David Levering Lewis has carved one volume out of his superlative two-volume biography of this monumental figure that set the standard for historical scholarship on this era. In his magisterial prose, Lewis chronicles Du Bois’s long and storied career, detailing the momentous contributions to our national character that still echo today. W.E.B. Du Bois is a 1993 and 2000 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction and the winner of the 1994 and 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

The present volume is quite different from the other two autobiographies by Du Bois not only because of its additional two-decade span, and the significantly altered outlook of its author, but also because in it—unlike the others—he seeks, as he writes, "to review my life as frankly and fully as I can." Of course, with the directness and honesty which so decisively characterized him, he reminds the reader of this book of the intense subjectivity that inevitably permeates autobiography; hence, he writes, he offers this account of his life as he understood it and as he—would like others to believe—it to have been. Certainly, while Dr. Du Bois was deep in his ninth decade when he died, longevity was the least remarkable feature of his life. As editor, author, lecturer, scholar, organizer, inspirer, and fighter, he was among the most consequential figures of the twentieth century. Necessarily, therefore, the full and final accounting of that life and his times becomes an indispensable volume.

A definitive biography of the African-American author and scholar describes DuBois's formative years, the evolution of his philosophy, and his roles as a founder of the NAACP and architect of the American civil-rights movement

Amy Bass tells the compelling story of how her home region ignored its most famous son--W.E.B. Du Bois--for decades because of politics and race. A startling and important tale of social denial, of erased historical memory, and a hidden past now coming to light.