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W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 by David Levering Lewis
smartcookiesca's review against another edition
Dull. Way too much minimally relevant context.
jrug's review against another edition
5.0
In part because the pace slows as Lewis' level of detail increases, this was even more work than the first volume. Unquestionably worth it, though. Between Du Bois' story and Lewis' prose (which reaches extraordinary heights in a few places), this is a masterful examination of an extraordinary life.
mattrohn's review against another edition
5.0
The Power Broker by Robert Caro changed how I feel about biography as a genre. It gave me a real appreciation for how, when trying to tell the story of a place and an era, following one person who was deeply involved can be a perfect framing mechanism\jumping off point for all of the context that makes this time and place worth talking about, even if you aren't particularly interested in the individual at the center I've now finally finished David Levering Lewis' two part biography of W.E.B. Du Bois (Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 and 1919-1963 The Fight for Equality and the American Century) and it's another phenomenal monumental project on the level of Caro's biographies and clearly deserving of its two separate Pulitzers. With a lifespan reaching from the beginning of reconstruction to the height of the civil rights movement, and as the preeminent figure of black political thought for the decades of the racial nadir, Du Bois' life is the ideal opportunity to trace the arc of racial politics in America in the first century after emancipation. While the entire biography is deeply researched and well written, the standout portion is easily the middle half (the second half of the first volume and first half of the second), covering the least often discussed era of race relations in the US, the progressive era and its aftermath. Here Du Bois is at the height of his influence, working through the NAACP and The Crisis domestically and the Pan-African Congresses abroad in a world rapidly being transformed by modernization and colonization with deep uncertainty about how separable these two projects were. No other book I've read since The Warmth of Other Suns has so clearly and powerfully conveyed the shape of social and cultural changes over vast expanses of time in the US and I can't recommend it enough.
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