The landmark book about being black in America, now in an expanded edition commemorating the 150th anniversary of W. E. B. Du Bois's birth and featuring a new introduction by Ibram X. Kendi, the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning- The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and How to Be an Antiracist
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was born in Great
Barrington, Massachusetts. A sociologist, historian, poet, and
writer of several novels, Du Bois was one of the main founders of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He
was a lifelong critic of American society and an advocate of black
people against racial injustice. He spent his last years in Ghana,
where he died in exile at the age of ninety-five.
Ibram X. Kendi (introduction)is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in
the Humanities at Boston University and the founding director of
the BU Center for Antiracist Research. A contributing writer at The
Atlantic and a CBS News correspondent, he is a coeditor, with
Keisha N. Blain, of the #1 New York Times bestseller Four Hundred
Souls and the author of many other books, including The Black
Campus Movement, which won the W. E. B. Du Bois Book Prize; Stamped
from the Beginning- The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in
America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction; and
three #1 New York Times bestsellers- How to Be an Antiracist;
Stamped- Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored with Jason
Reynolds; and Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky.A
MacArthur Fellow and one of Time magazine's 100 most influential
people in the world,Kendi lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
“I was assigned this book of essays in college and it was
transformative for me as a person and a writer. Du Bois captures
the complexity and the interiority of what it’s like to be black in
the United States, and even though it was written more than a
century ago, the way Du Bois writes makes it feel like he wrote
this book last year.” —Tomi Adeyemi, #1 New York
Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone,
in the Good Morning America Book Club
“A work that is still relevant today . . . Vividly depict[s] what
it was like to be black . . . Many of the ideas that Du Bois
outlined in the book still endure. . . . [A book] for anyone who
wants to understand America.” —Lynn Neary, NPR’s Morning
Edition
“[The Souls of Black Folk is] the foundation on which Du Bois
built a lifetime of ideas, and on which the black and antiracist
intelligentsia continues to build today. . . . In 1903 . . . black
newspapers . . . typically shouted in unison, ‘SHOULD BE READ AND
STUDIED BY EVERY PERSON, WHITE AND BLACK.’ . . . And today it still
SHOULD BE READ AND STUDIED BY EVERY PERSON.” —Ibram X. Kendi, from
the Introduction
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