W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868–1919

The Pulitzer Prize–winning biography about the author and premier architect of America's civil rights movement.

Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize and the Bancroft Prize

A Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award

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.

“A remarkable study. . . . Mr. Lewis so vividly evokes the environments of that shaped Du Bois that one almost participates in the life.” —The New York Times Book Review

“An engrossing masterpiece. . . . A dazzling feat of scholarship performed with Lewis's customary grace of style.” —The Washington Post Book World

“To say that Lewis's is the finest biography of Du Bois ever written hardly does justice to his performance. Until the publication of this superb new book, Du Bois's life had never received the treatment it deserved.” —Pulitzer Prize–winning author Eric Foner