The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War

Williams, Chad L.

ISBN 10: 0374293155 / ISBN 13: 9780374293154

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023

About this Item

Gently used with minimal wear on the corners and cover. A few pages may contain light highlighting or writing, but the text remains fully legible. Dust jacket may be missing, and supplemental materials like CDs or codes may not be included. May be ex-library with library markings. Ships promptly!

Seller Inventory # DBV.0374293155.G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374293155
• ISBN 13: 9780374293154
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

Named A Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor
Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography
A MAAH Stone Book Award Finalist

The dramatic story of W. E. B. Du Bois's reckoning with the betrayal of Black soldiers during World War I―and a new understanding of one of the great twentieth-century writers.

When W. E. B. Du Bois, believing in the possibility of full citizenship and democratic change, encouraged African Americans to “close ranks” and support the Allied cause in World War I, he made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Seeking both intellectual clarity and personal atonement, for more than two decades Du Bois attempted to write the definitive history of Black participation in World War I. His book, however, remained unfinished. In The Wounded World, Chad Williams offers the dramatic account of Du Bois’s failed efforts to complete what would have been one of his most significant works. The surprising story of this unpublished book offers new insight into Du Bois’s struggles to reckon with both the history and the troubling memory of the war, along with the broader meanings of race and democracy for Black people in the twentieth century.

Drawing on a broad range of sources, most notably Du Bois’s unpublished manuscript and research materials, Williams tells a sweeping story of hope, betrayal, disillusionment, and transformation, setting into motion a fresh understanding of the life and mind of arguably the most significant scholar-activist in African American history. In uncovering what happened to Du Bois’s largely forgotten book, Williams offers a captivating reminder of the importance of World War I, why it mattered to Du Bois, and why it continues to matter today.

About the Author

Chad L. Williams is the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of the award-winning book Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era and the coeditor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence. His writings and op-eds have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Time, and The Conversation. He lives in Needham, Massachusetts.