W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the leading activist men of letters in 20th-century America. Du Bois organized, protested, laid out programs, petitioned, and raised questions of long-term strategy and short-term tactics. He wrote detailed scholarly investigations, Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction among them, as well as popular current articles. He was a commanding speaker and a prodigious correspondent. And yet, it was not until the 1980s that his complete writings became available.



The World of W.E.B. Du Bois was created to provide a short journey through his views on virtually all aspects of 20th-century life. More than 1,000 quotations from his published writings and correspondence are provided. These are grouped into 19 topical and one miscellaneous chapter. Each quote begins with a heading designed to summarize the main sense of the quotation. A subject index provides additional access to the ideas of this complex figure. Essential reading for all involved in American race relations and intellectual history and American and Black Studies.