The unfinished manuscript haunted its author as much as its subject matter haunted the world. Du Bois’s inability to complete his major treatise on Black participation in the First World War is a window onto how the tragedies of industrial scale killing, colonialism, and the color line changed the world and a man. In light of an American Century defined by war, the durability of racism, and the elusive quest for democracy, Williams’s account of W. “Chad Williams managed to write a thoroughly gripping story of failure. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, winner of the Pulitzer Prize to Chad Williams’s brilliant The Wounded World.” -David Levering Lewis, author of W.E.B. “Until Professor Williams’s heroic accumulation of sources, his stunning mastery of them, and uncanny reckoning with his subject’s ego, Du Bois’s unfinished history of the Great War remained a mystery.
Reviews BookĮxcerpts About the Author Reviews Praise for The Wounded World 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. The surprising story of this unpublished book offers new insight into Du Bois’s struggles to reckon with both the history and the troubling memory of the war, along with the broader meanings of race and democracy for Black people in the twentieth century.ĭrawing on a broad range of sources, most notably Du Bois’s unpublished manuscript and research materials, Williams tells a sweeping story of hope, betrayal, disillusionment, and transformation, setting into motion a fresh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 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. 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. 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. Media Issues, Communication & Journalism.Computer Science & Information Technology.
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