The Souls of Black Folk

Reading The Souls of Black Folk (newly reprinted by Restless Books with an introduction by Vann R. Newkirk II) is a little like seeing Hamlet for the first time: phrase after familiar phrase—"double consciousness," "how does it feel to be a problem?"—comes at you with the echoes of a hundred years of use and reuse, but this is where they gained their purchase, in a slim collection of essays that's become one of the foundations of American intellectual history. Du Bois's talents, as poet, theorizer, organizer, historian, and reporter, are all on display in a book that feels of its time (1903) and ours; of all people, Du Bois would probably be the least surprised that the color line, the "problem of the Twentieth Century," as he predicted, remains a problem of the 21st as well.