W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 cover art

W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919

Preview
Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919

By: David Levering Lewis
Narrated by: Courtney B. Vance
Try Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $42.99

Buy Now for $42.99

About this listen

First time on audio! The timeless Pulitzer Prize winner, the first in an epic two-volume biography that set the standard for historical scholarship on this era, narrated by Emmy and Tony Award winner Courtney B. Vance.

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.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America—was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator. In the first of his superlative two-volume biography, renowned scholar David Levering Lewis chronicles the first five decades of Du Bois’s long and storied life, detailing in magisterial prose the momentous contributions to our national character that still echo today.
African American Studies Americas Cultural & Regional Historical Politicians Politics & Activism Social Sciences Specific Demographics United States Biography Social movement Civil Rights Socialism Social justice Imperialism Capitalism

Critic Reviews

"When a nonfiction audiobook is described as “monumental,” it can be challenging for listeners. But Courtney B. Vance makes this biography of pioneering Black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois highly accessible. The work is still long and detailed, but Vance’s pace and tone keep it from seeming tedious. He varies his voice to suit the material, especially in denoting irony or when delivering passages in which the author shows that Du Bois’s writings differ from the facts of his life. Vance tackles the foreign names, places, and concepts of Du Bois’s European period with facility. Du Bois was the intellectual force behind the founding of the NAACP and the modern Civil Rights movement. This audiobook does justice to the man, and Vance’s narration does justice to the book."
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.