Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books
of all time
When first published in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black
Folk struck like a thunderclap, quickly establishing itself as a work
that wholly redefined the history of the black experience in America,
introducing the now famous "problem of the color line." In decades
since, its stature has only grown, and today it ranks as one of the most
influential and resonant works in the history of American thought.
This centennial edition contains a landmark Introduction by historian
David Levering Lewis that brilliantly demonstrates how The Souls of
Black Folk remains indispensable not only to an understanding of the
history of race and democracy in America but to considerations of the
future of racial and cultural comity in the twenty-first century.