Will I love The Souls of Black Folk?

I think WEB DuBois is one of the greatest scholars ever to live. I recommend this book because DuBois eloquently tackles some of American society's greatest challenges. I like that DuBois is not satisfied with contemporary explanations about racial inequities. I am grateful to DuBois for encouraging American society to explore the roles of race and racism and explaining the experiences of people of African ancestry in America.

Du Bois taught me how to be a historian. I began reading him while riding a bus home from a summer job in Boston and missed my stop by two miles.

He insisted that scholars engage in struggles for justice and refuse to spend their professional lives behind stacks of books. He demanded that we center the lives of the forgotten in our writing and allow them to tell us how to write history.

These lessons have never left me. 

I love this book, which was published in 1903, because of how timeless it is and because of how relevant Du Bois’ words are to our present moment in which racial inequality and racism persist.

I appreciate the historical perspective Du Bois provides his readers so the past is not forgotten, so the past helps us understand the historical trajectory that led us to right now. The writing is clear, smart, and beautiful, offering a blend of genres—from music to memoir—that keeps readers engaged as they read Du Bois’ astute analyses of the past and his suggestive projections about the… show more.

It is rare for a book published more than a century ago to seem as if it had just come off the presses, but W. E. B. Du Bois succeeded in producing a work so profound that it might well be equally relevant one hundred years from now. Du Bois was a luminescent scholar, a passionate advocate, and a graceful and accessible writer. His essays range from observations on the arduous lives of Black people living under Jim Crow to a celebration of their indomitable spirit in the face of institutional racism to a ferocious condemnation of the “accommodationist” philosophy… show more.