--- title: "The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois (The Norton Library Annotated Edition)" description: "Summary:  A series of essays and one short story, published in 1903. I have been a part of a book group that has met on and off, with slightly different membership since 2019. The group had read about..." url: https://bookwi.se/souls-of-black-folk/ date: 2026-10-03 modified: 2026-10-03 author: "Adam Shields" categories: ["Book Reviews"] type: post lang: en --- # The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois (The Norton Library Annotated Edition) [![The Souls of Black Folk by WEB DuBois (The Norton Library Annotated Edition) cover image](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/41hQLGj4lFL._SL1200_-196x300.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Black-Folk-Norton-Library/dp/039387074X/)**Summary:  A series of essays and one short story, published in 1903.** I have been a part of a book group that has met on and off, with slightly different membership since 2019. The group had read about 4-5 books a year over the last 6 to 7 years. Over the past year it has mostly been about racial history. We read [James by Percival Everett](https://bookwi.se/james/) (fictional retelling of Huck Finn from Jim’s perspective). We read a book [about James Baldwin](https://bookwi.se/the-gospel-according-to-james-baldwin/) and then [The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin](https://bookwi.se/the-fire-next-time-2/). WEB Du Bois came up a number of times as we read about Baldwin, and so our last book was The Souls of Black Folk. I was interested in [rereading](https://bookwi.se/souls-of-black-folks/) this in part because I recently read [The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel by Gary J. Dorrien](https://bookwi.se/the-new-abolition/) and as we started Souls of Black Folk I read the first half of [W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868–1919: Biography of a Race](https://www.amazon.com/W-B-Bois-1868-1919-Biography-ebook/dp/B00BY5XSLI/), which brought me up to a few years past when Du Bois published this. I previously listened to an audiobook of this Souls of Black Folk, so I picked up the Norton Annotated edition for background. I read three different introductions to the book to get some other perspectives, but this introduction by Jesse McCarthy was a solid introduction. Du Bois’ biography and the context of the world he was writing in really do help illuminate this book. I have a hard time recommending David Levering Lewis’ two-volume biography because few people will want to read nearly 2000 pages and even the single-volume consolidated biography by Lewis is over 900 pages. (Although Lewis is a good writer and it is worth reading, most people just won’t want to read that much.) Du Bois was born just a few years after the end of the Civil War and became one of the most educated men in the US. He was an academic who revolutionized sociology, ethnography and data presentation. (There is [an interesting book](https://bookwi.se/visualizing-black-america/) about how his work at the world’s fair changed data presentation.) He moved from just being an academic to helping to found the Niagria movement which eventually grew into the NAACP and he moved from writing with academic distance to becoming an advocate as the editor of The Crisis (the publication of the NAACP). Eventually Du Bois became frustrated with the US and gave up his citizenship and moved to Africa in his 90s and died the day of the 1963 March on Washington. His death was announced during the speeches that day. Most of the essays were either edited versions of his research articles that were published in various journals or more popular-level articles published in places like the Atlantic. The mix of writing styes really is an interesting aspect of the book. There is a short story, a personal essay talking about his own experience as a teacher in regard to the importance of education, or a reflection about one of his mentors or a very personal essay about about the death of his son as a toddler, in part because of a lack of medical care. In the years around when most of these essays were written, he was teaching at Atlanta University and doing research of racism, economics and sociology of the Black Belt areas of the South. As with any essay collection there are stronger and weaker chapters. I thought the ending chapter on the spirituals was a very weak chapter. (James Cone or Howard Thurman’s books on the spirituals are better.) But I continue to be interested in how much my book club has enjoyed reading original documents like this and The Fire Next Time. We have had great discussions. It can sometimes get to be too much about current events as we read historic events. But there is always a mix of shock about how much things are different and how much things are similar. I also want to note again that the annotated version was helpful here. I am pretty well read in US racial history. I know many of the referenced characters. I knew quite a bit about the chapters that were opposing Booker T Washington (which is what a lot of people know about this book without having read it.) But the annotations are helpful to draw attention to references other poetry or Biblical allusions or events of the time that I didn’t know about. There is always going to be questions about what did or did not have an annotation. I personally do not need annotations about the things that I already know about. But there are other things that I wanted an annotation for and I had to look it up on my own. Generally, I think the annotations were well done, even if I always want more of them. From here we are going on to the next book in a couple weeks. If anyone want to join, we meet at 8 PM Eastern on zoom. Just message me to get a link if you are interested. The next book will be Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman. **The Souls of Black Folk by WEB DuBois (The Norton Library Annotated Edition) [Paperback](https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Black-Folk-Norton-Library/dp/039387074X/), [Kindle Edition](https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Black-First-Norton-Library-ebook/dp/B0BK2K1425/)**