social sciences

If you read only one edition of this work, this is the edition you should choose. The preface is outstanding, and the "Contexts" and "Criticsm" sections (which comprise half of this volume) are extraordinarily helpful to the nonspecialist reader. Please note, however, that there is a serious error in at least one of the footnotes. On the last page of "The Niagara Movement" essay DuBois refers to Robert Gould Shaw, whom the editors describe (in footnote #4) as an African American Union Army Civil War hero. Not so! Shaw was white; there were no African American officers during the Civil War. (I contacted Henry Lewis Gates Jr. about this, and he confirmed that this was an error in editing.)

The Souls of Black Folk has become a staple of courses in American literature and culture, and it is a must read for anyone generally interested in the world we share. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Terri Oliver have done us all a great service by putting together what is easily the best edition of this twentieth-century classic: their preface alone is a valuable contribution to scholarship, and the contexts and criticism sections are a rich lode of information. I look forward to assigning this edition in a number of the college courses I teach.

The rediscovery and use of the National Portrait Gallery picture provide the crowning touch to this superb edition.