This dialectic underlies much of The Everlasting Sky. And even that trivial insight is not key to understanding or experiencing the dazzling Anishinabe voices under Vizenor's pen. Perhaps it is necessary to allow oneself to experience the pain in it, even vicariously, to progress to something like a starting point, or common ground. Then the elusive beauty that pervades the underlying cultural vision can perhaps be glimpsed or imagined.

Though it is difficult to understand those whom we have so badly hurt, it is not a punishment to read The Everlasting Sky. Rather, it is an experience of richness, like the final series of paintings of George Morrison, that work to "create a sense of that imagic moment when the water on the horizon of the lake merges with the sky (p. x)."

Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer

A real life conspiracy that reads better than any fiction.

A brilliant young officer, falsely accussed of treason. A trial with secret documents that have been forged. A true traitor on the loose. And the direct involvement of at lease two governments. A fantastic display of courage when it was least expected. An officer that survives Devil's Island on nothing but courage and a desire to clear his name.

Add a coverup to protect the original court, and a government that aids the conspirators, and it is complete. A fantastic entry into the 20th century.

Admittedly, I have very little experience with African-American culture. "The Souls of Black Folk" I think helps bridge this gap by exploring the history - economic, social and political - and pyschology of the African-American. I came away with a much better understanding of organizations like the Freeman's Relief Association, men like Booker T. Washington, African-American Christianity and, to a small extent, the psyche of the black man in America, at least its historical antecedents, up until the early 1900s.

I have read reviews dismissing Dubois's work as outdated, especially after the '60s and the civil rights movement. Perhaps it is, though, again, I don't feel I know enough about African-American culture in our day to be able to say either way. Having said that, I am much better acquainted with other socially and economically constructed "niggers" of our world, both domestically and internationally, and in that regard I think Dubois's "Souls of Black Folk" is still very much applicable, in fact a complementary resource from which to glean insight into contemporary politics and economics. Perhaps, hopefully, there will one day be no more "niggers" on American soil. But, unfortunately, there will always be "niggers" in this world, and Dubois's lectures on removing "the great problem of the 20th century - the color line" are as important today as they were 100 years ago.

From "Of the Sons of Master and Man":
In any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.

Perhaps basic, perhaps something one has heard numerous times, but the fact that this citation and many, many others like it to be found in "The Souls of Black Folk" were written 100 years before guys like Ralph Nader and Howard Zinn were selling hundreds of thousands of books based on a slightly different spin of the same argument is at least relevant, if not impressive.

Dubois was no racist, as any of the rest of the aforementioned group weren't either. If anything (and perhaps in this time this is a politically incorrect term) he was a classist, and merely argued for the assimilation of the black man into the society that did not understand their mutual dependence. Reading the book did not produce "white guilt" or anything the David Horwitzes of the world would like to convince me is happening to me. It provided me with a greater understanding and respect for people I daily ride the metro with, work with, am an American citizen WITH.

Some reviewers refer to DuBois as "the Black Emerson" and, as a university instructor, I heard similar references made: 'the Black Dewey" or "the Black Park," referring to the Chicago School scholars. Du Bois was brilliant; indeed, these white men should be being called "the white Du Bois"! Du Bois literally created the scientific method of observation and qualitative research. With the junk being put out today in the name of "dissertations," simply re-read Du Bois' work on the Suppression of the African Slave Trade and his work on the Philadelphia Negro and it is clear that he needs not be compared to any white man of his time or any other: he was a renaissance man who cared about his people and, unlike too many of the scholars of day, he didn't just talk the talk or write the trite; he walked the walk and organized the unorganizable.

White racism suffered because Du Bois raised the consciousness of the black masses. But he did more than that; by renouncing his American citizenship and moving to Ghana, he proved that Pan Africanism is not just something to preach or write about (ala Molefi Asante, Tony Martin, Jeffries and other Africanists); it is a way of life, both a means and an end. Du Bois organized the first ever Pan African Congress and, in doing so, set the stage for Afrocentricity, Black Studies and the Bandung Conference which would be held in 1954 in Bandung, Indonesia. Du Bois not only affected people in this country, he was a true internationalist.

Souls of Black Folk is an important narrative that predates critical race theory. It is an important reading, which predates formal Black Studies. The book calls for elevation of black people by empowering black communities -- today's leadership is so starved for acceptance that I believe that Karenga was correct when he says that these kind of people "often doubt their own humanity."

The book should be read by all.

Although Lewis soft-pedals Du Bois' deep character flaws which caused him to be constantly at odds with others who were "on his side" in the fight for racial equality, and permitted him to excuse the murder and outrages of Stalinism and the Japanese military aggression and ethnic cleansing in Asia, the author clearly reveals these facts of Du Bois' life. Lewis reveals how Du Bois' mind became so poisoned with a visceral hatred of White power, and its adjunct Western capitalism, that he eventually reached the point where he could look the other way or excuse the outrages committed by peoples or regimes opposed to Western interests (which he never seemed to quite grasp were really his own interests and those of the Negro in America). In the end Du Bois seemed opposed to almost any policy his country adopted and he supported any force in the world (be it Pan-Africanism, Bolshevism, Japanese militarism, or Chinese communism) that opposed the interests of the "White governments." Thus, did a brilliant social critic end up a confused mind destined to play the role of a pawn for regimes opposed to Western interests.

Lewis is very good at highlighting Du Bois' conflict with Marcus Garvey of whom he draws a great character sketch. He points out that Garvey's early followers were often poor, less educated, and often of West Indian origins, while the more "elitist" Du Bois circulated among, and pretended to speak for, the Talented Tenth of the African American people. Du Bois was an elitist and intellectual who could not stomach the irrational pronouncements of Marcus Garvey. Du Bois' viewpoint was that of the Black urban, educated, professional.

Lewis is also very strong with detail concerning Du Bois' widening differences with the NAACP leadership and the association's approach to fighting for equality. Du Bois was not a great fan of Walter White, Roy Wilkins, and Thurgood Marshall who, with their legalistic approach, stressed working within the "White system." As in volume one, Lewis does a good job of discussing Du Bois' many writings and shows how Du Bois himself (as witnessed by his "The Gift of Black Folks") never outgrew his own racial stereotyping. Lewis also soft-pedals Du Bois' many affairs with intellectual women, but he does document these relationships. He shows how Du Bois, a believer in the rights of women, virtually abandoned his wife Nina over a period of many years in almost every sense but financial (many of his friends and intellectual acquanitances never met his wife) and how he was less than a father to his unfortunate daughter Yolande (who was one of the great disappointments of his life.)

Lewis' book is possibly most fascinating when he deals with the Harlem Renaissance and the various figures with whom Du Bois was familiar. He details Du Bois' eventual alienation from the creative people of this era who depicted the seediness of Black urban life and culture. This too realistic depiction of Black life by the Renaissance literary figures embarrassed and angered Du Bois who wanted to believe that the "Negro race" was destined for a special place in history and, as a race, manifest certain elements of racial superiority. Du Bois criticized the Harlem Renaissance writers, poets, and artists for not sharing his belief that art and culture should serve racial politics. As Lewis shows, "Du Bois's own deep anti-modernist taboos surfaced" in his criticism of the Renaissance literati. Lewis also spends a good deal of time on the historiography of the Reconstruction Era to enable his reader to grasp the importance of Du Bois' writings on the subject and how they served as a necessary correction (despite Du Bois' own one-sidedness and exaggerated claims) to the more traditional school of historical writing on the Reconstruction Era. He also reveals the extent to which Du Bois would never give up the ridiculous notion that the freed slaves saved democracy in America. He desperatly needed to find a special role for the African American in the history of the the great country. Despite Du Bois' brilliant intellect, it was his tendency to see "White" hatred of the Negro as the central paradigm of all modern history, that prevented him from being widely accepted as a scholar. For him, all historical understanding began with this simple fact. Often his own worst enemy, Du Bois, Lewis tells us, "managed to give the impression that racial discrimination had been invented soley to make his life miserable."

In the end, Du Bois felt the American Negro had let him down and he lost his faith in the special role the Negro was to play in history. As he himself admitted, "I misinterpreted the age in which I lived." One has to think that this disillusionment played as much a role in his decision to leave the country as any other reason. All in all, Lewis' biography portrays Du Bois as not so much a heroic figure, as a tragic one; a brilliant mind warped by a troubled soul that was the reflection of much of the pain experienced by an educated African American in the first half of the twentieth century.

No one can doubt that Du Bois was a brillant scholar and a careful researcher, at least in his early works. It was a tragedy that the unjust treatment of his race lead him to renounce America just as the Civil Rights movement was about to change it. Ironically, Du Bois exiled himself to newly-independent Ghana - - a country that became a one-party state, then a dictatorship (which Du Bois did not renounce) finally ended by a military coup.

For all Du Bois' claimed affiliation with the masses, reading this biography one cannot but get the feeling that what really bothered Du Bois was not the rejection of his people, but rather of himself.

This magisterial work is not a book for the casual reader who wants little more than a few facts about the life of W.E.B. Du Bois. It is a complex tapestry of a troubled man who saw himself as "the avatar of a race whose troubled fate he was predestined to interpret and direct." Lewis clearly wishes to show how Du Bois was "the incomparable mediator of the wounded souls of black people." This is a very rich and full biography. There are many asides and digressions as Lewis takes the reader into the troubled world of the educated African American at the end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. The conflicts and turmoil among Du Bois' "Talented Tenth" are vividly brought to the fore as the struggle between the Tuskegee Machine of Booker Washington and the more "radical" Du Bois faction takes center stage.

Du Bois' development and personal history are thoroughly covered as are all his important writings. He is shown to be a high-energy, brilliant man who was terribly frustrated and somewhat warped by the lack of intellectual and professional respect afforded him by the dominant white society. Du Bois is revealed to be a very human, if rather arrogant, and at times, hypocritical individual. He never outgrew, for instance, the racial stereotyping he learned at the German universities. Throughout his life he retained a deep ambivalence about Western civilization, almost a love-hate relationship that eventually fed his Afro-centrist delusions. Beneath it all one senses a degree of racial self-hatred at work. At times Du Bois waxes between practical political proposals for the United States and a quite utopian or mystical view of the possibilities of the colored people around the world. Along the way the reader is introduced to an amazing number of fascinating people involved in philanthropy and the early civil rights movement. John and Lugenia Hope, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, early founders of the N.A.A.C.P. like Oswald Villard, Joel Spingarn, and Mary Ovington, and the irrepressible William Monroe Trotter are just a few of the individuals who rightly have their lives celebrated in this eye-opening account.

Lewis is especially strong in depicting the limitations of the viewpoint and the activity of the white philanthropists and the developing conflicts between white organized labor and the poor black migrants moving to the northern cities during the "Great Migration." Throughout Lewis demonstrates total command of the material as well as a comprehension of philosophy, history, and the issues of the day. Overall, this is a marvelous look at the life of an important and complicated man as well as the evolving fortunes of the African American community. Lewis has given us a balanced and fair assessment of Du Bois the man and scholar. And, along the way, he provides a ringing indictment of much of American life in the one hundred years following the Civil War. This Pulitzer Prize winning work is a book for the patient and learned reader, but a book that returns great rewards. There are few, if any, books that so thoroughly document the struggle for civil rights in this country from the perspective of America's educated black community.