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Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka considers all of Africa--indeed, all the world--as he poses the question: once repression stops, is reconciliation between oppressor and victim possible? In the face of centuries long devastations wrought on the African continent and her Diaspora by slavery, colonialism, Apartheid and the manifold faces of racismwhat form of recompense could possibly be adequate? In a voice as eloquent and humane as it is forceful, Soyinka challenges notions of simple forgiveness, of confession and absolution, as strategies for social healing. Ultimately, he turns to art--poetry, music, painting--as one source that may nourish the seed of reconciliation, art as the generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope offorgiveness.

Based on Soyinka's Stewart-McMillan lectures delivered at the Du Bois Institute at Harvard, The Burden of Memory speaks not only to those concerned specifically with African politics, but also to anyone seeking the path to social justice through some of history's most inhospitable terrain.Amazon.com Review
When a book begins with a statement such as "In the 1992presidential elections, it would appear that the United States stood areasonable chance of acquiring a new president in the person of acertain Mr. David Duke," a reader must wonder if the author is beingdeliberately alarmist or has simply lost contact with reality. (Afterall, Duke had little national credibility, and even his campaigns inhis home state of Louisiana could best be described as highlyproblematic.) On matters concerning his native Nigeria, and on therest of the African nations, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is perhapsmore reliable, albeit still somewhat longwinded. The Burden ofMemory is based on a set of lectures Soyinka gave at theW.E.B. Dubois Institute and faithfully preserves their highly academicorality, whether he is advocating massive reparations for the peopleof Africa for the historical injustices to which they have beensubject, or using literary criticism to explore the ways in whichAfricans have been willing to "forgive" Westerners in the hopes ofassimilating into the culture that formerly treated them as vassals. ... Read more

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Wole Soyinka The Giant
You read Wole Soyinka's work and you become a man, period. Please don't try reviewing work you don't understand. A quotation from Henry David Thoreau on "READING" will help those struggling with understading and of course in categorising reviewers: A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar, but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;-and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading... a very low level, worthy only of pigmies and manikins. That was WALDEN (1854) but still relevant today.

...of social existence...
This is a highly analytical, scholarly book, three lectures Soyinka gave at Harvard through it's W.E.B. Dubois Institute's Macmillan series in 1997.
This is also a densely packed linguistic explosion, a cultural retrospective of the ancients' behaviors, the modern ones, and the poet's struggle to express the depth of existence.
I also got through it only because I percieved and imagined the flow of the statements through clear imagery. There was much that I lost and as much time marveling at the control and brilliance of his mind to evoke the depths of Negritude, it's descendant issues and conflicts, and the artist's all important concern for the state of life.
But if I had attended these lectures I would have been gone. Off to the idea expressed ten minutes ago.But the thoughts of man's brutality of itself and incredible passages like this thrilled and bore into me:

"the fact remains that the other has impinged on it in a way that permanently precludes the solace of remaining within the secure isolation of its own precedent world order, or whatever vestiges of it are left. In short, the effects of that 'disdain' appear permanent, inescapable; they are to be read in a thousand and one actualities that plague the continent, and can be measured in the retardation of social existence against the visible prosperity of the other on a shared planet." (pg.185)

This is a book about the "...the retardation of social existence..."

In defense of a great author
Let me start by acknowledging that I haven't read this particular work.I'm merely expressing my ire at an ignoramus of a reviewer from Philadelphia, who suggested that Soyinka's nobel prize was not well deserved.While I'd be the first to acknowledge that Soyinka's writing can be difficult, I would suggest that this cretin start off with Soyinka's autobiographical corpus of "Ake: the years of childhood", "Isara" and "Ibadan: the pemkelemes years" then, maybe such powerful (if acerbic and polemical) works as "The Man Died," before attempting the more difficult critical works like "Myth, Literature and the African World" and by all accounts, the work under review.

I do not believe that such a powerful mind as Soyinka's, could write a lightweight tome and so while I haven't read "The Burden of Memory," I'm willing to stick my neck out and give it three stars if only because while Soyinka's mastery of language is beyond doubt, his quest for precision, sometimes, rather ironically, renders his writing a tad dense; which can be the only explanation for the bulk of complaints, levelled at this work, on this occassion.

Soyinka is more than "The Burden of Memory..."
Wole Soyinka's mastery of the English language, as I have had occasion to say on another forum, borders on the supernatural. And perhaps therein lies the man's flaw--but that is a matter I will get to in a minute.

"The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness," you must understand, is "in the obligatory [Soyinka] fashion," a compilation of oral lectures the learned professor gave at Harvard. You must understand too, that the writing is basically academic, and suited more to an oral lecture. And because we speak of Soyinka, the writing is characteristically difficult.

So then, his lectures-turn-books (including, of course, "The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness") are not the best of works with which to appraise Soyinka's genius.For a true appreciation of Soyinka's literary prowess, you must read his plays and novels.

The flaw, of which I spoke earlier, is captured in the question a friend once posed to me (not Soyinka): "Is not the purpose of language to communicate?" Without a full-fledged dictionary, and the will to re-read whole paragraphs, one would struggle to keep up with Soyinka's writing.

In all, whether one likes it or not, the man is a literary giant, period!

Mildly interesting at best
There is no doubt that Wole Soyinka is a good writer - his Nobel prize was justly deserved and not a case of affirmative action as another reviewer insultingly suggested.However, someone encountering Soyinka for the first time in this book would not be tempted to try reading his more famous writings: this book is, to be frank, not well written.Based on three lectures Soyinka gave at Harvard University in 1997, Soyinka touches upon the very topical reparations controversy in the first essay, praises the Senegalese writer Leopold Senghor in the second and spends the last examining African poets' attempts to deal with the legacies of colonialism and racism.

Through all three lectures Soyinka employs a very dense style, one that might have worked well when speaking for an academic audience at Harvard but one that does not translate well onto the written page.Phrases like 'slaves into the twentieth-first century, mouthing the mangy mandates of mendacity, ineptitude, corruption and sadism' sound impressive but are merely a means for Soyinka to play around with words when he could be spending his time seriously addressing very important issues like reparations.When he does get down to business, he writes that 'reparations would involve the acceptance by Western nations of a moral obligation to repatriate the post-colonial loot salted away in their vaults, in real estate and business holdings' but never goes into detail exactly what this would involve.What is more disturbing is his frequent references to the U.S., which reveal his real ignorance about American life: examples include his belief that David Duke could have been elected President in 1992 and that the Ku Klux Klan held or holds a 'tentacular hold over power structures across the United States.'If he knows so little about the country where he is giving his lectures (and also holds a job as a Professor at Emory University), should we trust him to do a good job at addressing the international debate on reparations?

I didn't give this book one star for the fact that Soyinka's second and third lectures are reasonably coherent and do a good job of tracing the literary history behind Negritude.(For instance, he discusses the reasons why American black writers were in closer contact with Francophone blacks rather than their Anglophone brothers.)Yet even here he does not attempt to present any kind of thesis, but is merely contented with quoting various poems and doing some quick literary analysis.

Readers with an interest in discovering why Soyinka won the Nobel Prize should thus turn elsewhere. ... Read more

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In this intellectual history-making volume, multiple award-winning W. E. B. Du Bois scholar Reiland Rabaka offers the first book-length treatment of Du Bois's seminal sociological discourse: from Du Bois as inventor of the sociology of race to Du Bois asthe first sociologist of American religion; from Du Bois as a pioneer of urban and rural sociology to Du Bois as innovator of the sociology of gender and inaugurator of intersectional sociology; and, finally, from Du Bois as groundbreaking sociologist ofeducation and critical criminologist to Du Bois as dialectical critic of the disciplinary decadence of sociology and the American academy. Against Epistemic Apartheid brings new and intensive archival research into critical dialogue with the watershed work of classical and contemporary, male and female, black and white, national and international sociologists and critical social theorists' Du Bois studies. Against Epistemic Apartheid offers an accessible introduction to Du Bois's major contributions to sociology and, therefore, will be of interest to scholars and students not only in sociology, but also African American studies, American studies, cultural studies, critical race studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies, as well as scholars and students in "traditional" disciplines such as history, philosophy, political science, economics, education, and religion. ... Read more

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After Japan's defeat of Russia in the 1904 territorial war, W. E. B. Du Bois declared, "The Color Line in civilization has been crossed in modern times as it was in the great past. The awakening of the yellow races is certain. That the awakening of the brown and black races will follow in time, no unprejudiced student of history can doubt."

Du Bois's lifelong certitude that Asia would play a central role in determining the fates of races, nations, and world systems of power has not until now been made fully available. W. E. B. Du Bois on Asia captures in unprecedented detail Du Bois's first-person experiences of and responses to Indian nationalism, the war between China and Japan, the life of Mahatma Gandhi, colonialism in Malaysia and Burma, and the promise of China's Communist Revolution. It also provides critical understanding of Du Bois's obsession with the eternal relationship between Asia and Africa dating from antiquity to the postcolonial era.

The Du Bois of this collection emerges as a forerunner of postcolonialist thought, a lifelong internationalist, and the most important African American reader of Asia's place in the making of the modern world.

Bill V. Mullen is professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the author of Afro-Orientalism and Popular Fronts: Chicago and African American Cultural Politics, 1935-1946. Cathryn Watson is a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas at San Antonio. ... Read more

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Distinguished historian and social activist Manning Marable’s book, W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat, brings out the interconnections, unity, and consistency of W. E. B. Du Bois’s life and writings. Marable covers Du Bois’s disputes with Booker T. Washington, his founding of the NAACP, his work as a social scientist, popular figure, and his involvement in politics, placing them into the context of Du Bois’s views on black pride, equality, and cultural diversity. Marable stresses that, as a radical democrat, Du Bois viewed the problems of racism as intimately connected with capitalism. This second edition, with a new introduction by Marable, comes out in conjunction with the 100th Year Anniversary Edition of Du Bois’s classic Souls of Black Folk. ... Read more

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You have to read this!
What makes Du Bois so interesting is not only his intellect but that there were many intelligent people around him that challenged his mind. Booker T. and Garvey are the obvious ones but E. Franklin Frazier, A. Philip Randolph, Alexander Crummel and a host of others did as well. Manning does an exceptional job detailing one of the greats of the 20th Century. Black people should search this book to see not only what liberation requires but also as a tool to be used in order to filter through the many quasi leaders parading around today. "Any education that black people receive must be centered around solving their political, social and economic problems. It must start in Africa and come right up to the present day Negro." I'm para-phrasing but has anyone heard anything near this insightful from the characters of the last 25 years? ... Read more

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Definitions of modernism have been debated throughout the twentieth century. But both during the height of the modernist era and since, little to no consideration has been given to the work of minority writers as part of this movement. Considering works by writers ranging from B.A. Botkin, T.S. Eliot, Waldo Frank, and Jean Toomer to Pedro Pietri and Allen Ginsburg, these essays examine the disputed relationship between modernity, modernism, and American cultural diversity. In so doing, the collection as a whole adds an important new dimension to our understanding of twentieth-century literature. ... Read more

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After Japan's defeat of Russia in the 1904 territorial war, W. E. B. Du Bois declared, "The Color Line in civilization has been crossed in modern times as it was in the great past. The awakening of the yellow races is certain. That the awakening of the brown and black races will follow in time, no unprejudiced student of history can doubt."

Du Bois's lifelong certitude that Asia would play a central role in determining the fates of races, nations, and world systems of power has not until now been made fully available. W. E. B. Du Bois on Asia captures in unprecedented detail Du Bois's first-person experiences of and responses to Indian nationalism, the war between China and Japan, the life of Mahatma Gandhi, colonialism in Malaysia and Burma, and the promise of China's Communist Revolution. It also provides critical understanding of Du Bois's obsession with the eternal relationship between Asia and Africa dating from antiquity to the postcolonial era.

The Du Bois of this collection emerges as a forerunner of postcolonialist thought, a lifelong internationalist, and the most important African American reader of Asia's place in the making of the modern world.

Bill V. Mullen is professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the author of Afro-Orientalism and Popular Fronts: Chicago and African American Cultural Politics, 1935-1946. Cathryn Watson is a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas at San Antonio. ... Read more

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In this explosive book, Adolph Reed covers for the first time the full sweep and totality of W. E. B. Du Bois's political thought. Departing from existing scholarship, Reed locates the sources of Du Bois's thought in the cauldron of reform-minded intellectual life at the turn of the century, demonstrating that a commitment to liberal collectivism, an essentially Fabian socialism, remained pivotal in Du Bois's thought even as he embraced a range of political programs over time, including radical Marxism. He remaps the history of twentieth-century progressive thought and sharply criticizing recent trends in Afro-American, literary, and cultural studies.Amazon.com Review
In his own time, W.E.B. Du Bois was a controversial figure,and now, more than 30 years after his death, he continues to beso. Born in 1868, Du Bois was a central figure in African Americanintellectual life during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, yetmany of his positions are difficult to reconcile with current AfricanAmerican thought. Du Bois, for example, was an elitist who believedthat black society was divided between "the talented tenth"and everybody else. Yet in his later years, he joined the communistparty and moved to Africa, where he lived out the remainder of hislife. Since his death in 1963, a generation of African Americanintellectuals have tried to interpret, explain, or revise himaccording to their own beliefs; now Adolph Reed Jr. weighs in withW.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought.

Reed'sapproach to Du Bois is simple: he believes that what you read is whatyou get. When, for example, Du Bois wrote movingly in The Souls of Black Folk ofa feeling of "twoness," a sense of warring natures, Reedsuggests that, far from embracing a notion of double consciousness, DuBois was actually following precepts of early 20th-century socialtheory which described the split between primitive and civilizedsocieties. In addition to his discussion about Du Bois, Reed commentson many other African American critics at work today, from Houston Bakerto HenryLouis Gates, making the author of W.E.B. Du Bois and AmericanPolitical Thought as controversial as his subject. ... Read more

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Reconceptualizes African American Political Thought
When most think about Dubois, one of the first theoretical formulations that come to mind is the oft-quoted "double-consciousness."In this work, Reed's central task is to situate African American political thought squarely within the material context in which it occurs using W.E.B. Dubois as the focus for this project.Along the way Reed slices and dices Henry Louis Gates and the new black intellectuals, as well as the troublesome concept of "double consciousness" that Reed shows to be overstudied at best.Clearly among the best works of its kind to come to light in some years. ... Read more

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Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim are widely recognized as the trinity of sociological theory. While these three sociologists were trailblazing social theorists who enhanced the study of human behavior and its relationship to social institutions, other, more contemporary scholars were just as innovative - one of those scholars being W. E. B. Du Bois.

W. E. B. Du Bois was a political and literary giant of the 20th century, publishing over twenty books and thousands of essays and articles throughout his life. In The Social Theory of W. E. B. Du Bois, editor Phil Zuckerman assembles Du Bois’s work from a wide variety of sources, including articles Du Bois published in newspapers, speeches he delivered, selections from well-known classics such as The Souls of Black Folk and Darkwater, and lesser-known, hard-to-find material written by this revolutionary social theorist.

W. E. B Du Bois is arguably one of the most imaginative, perceptive, and prolific founders of the sociological discipline. In addition to leading the Pan-African movement and being an activist for civil rights for African Americans, Du Bois was a pioneer of urban sociology, an innovator of rural sociology, a leader in criminology, the first American sociologist of religion, and most notably the first great social theorist of race. The Social Theory of W. E. B. Du Bois is the first book to examine Du Bois’s writings from a sociological perspective and emphasize his theoretical contributions. This volume covers topics such as the meaning of race, race relations, international relations, economics, labor, politics, religion, crime, gender, and education.

The Social Theory of W. E. B. Du Bois offers an excellent introduction to the sociological theory of one of the 20th century’s intellectual beacons. It is a dynamic text for undergraduate and graduate students studying sociological theory, African American studies, and race and ethnicity.

Customer Reviews (1)

Greatest Sociologist who ever lived?
I had heard of Du Bois -- but I just thought he was a "black writer" -- a man of letters who had written some books. I had no idea that he was a founding sociologist. The intro to this volume is illuminating and passionate. It goes into great detail about Du Bois as a pioneering sociologist -- frankly, as a major in sociology, I was stunned. This man had been totally ignored for WAY too long.
The actual chapters/selections are profound, varied, and as timely as ever. Du Bois's grasp of international politics and global exploitation were ground-breaking. His views on race and gender were way ahead of his time. I hope that this volume is read by more sociology students. He's a heck of a lot better than Durkheim or Weber, that's for sure. ... Read more

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This book explores the significant intellectual impact the philosopher Jean Wahl had on the directions Gilles Deleuze took as a philosopher and writer of a philosophy of experimentation. The study of this influence also brings to light the significance of Deleuze's emphasis on "la pragmatique," inspired by Wahl's writings and teachings and his fascination with American pluralism and pragmatism, particularly that of William James. This book also attempts to put Deleuze's theories into action, to write in a deleuzian way about American "minor" literature and thought which Deleuze deemed "superior." This text inherently challenges and potentially provides an alternative way of reading/writing to standard critical approaches which Deleuze tells us necessarily reduce and distort a "minor" work's most lively, subtle and micro-politically efficient elements as they abort them from their "minoritarian" fields of meaning to coerce them into already existing, standard and standardizing concepts that belong to and reinforce the "Major Order's" organizational grid. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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America's Terrorist Hero
If you want to learn about John Brown's life and thought, and about the context and impact of his raid on Harper's Ferry, you should read historian David. S. Reynolds's "John Brown: Abolitionist", a passionate, dispassionate biography of the man and his times. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote his biography of Brown in 1909, at a time when Jim Crow ruled even the profession of history and when Brown was almost universally scorned as a madman and a fanatic. Du Bois wrote of him as a Promethean hero, the "necessary man' of American history. In doing so, he was not the revisionist. Rather, he was reviving the perception of Brown that had prevailed during the Civil War, the perception cultivated by the Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau and by the poets Whitman and Melville. Du Bois's biography is more an eloquent mythic epitaph than a work of simple scholarship. To read it is to understand Du Bois and the demands of African-Americans for respect and social justice, projected onto the one 'white' man of the antebellum Land of the Slave who sincerely shared his humanity with "black" men and women. Du Bois is an eloquent writer; his final chapter, on the Legacy of John Brown, is addressed to the segregationists and colonialists of his own era, but its appeal for justice - sadly - is as pertinent now as then. Here are Du Bois's concluding sentences:

"John Brown taught us that the cheapest price to pay for liberty is its cost today. The building of barriers against the advance of Negro-Americans hinders but in the end cannot altogether stop their progress.... Nor can the efficiency of gree as an economic developer be proven -- it may hasten development but it does so at the expense of solidity of structure, smoothness of motion, and real efficiency. Nor does selfish exploitation help the underdeveloped; rather it hinders and weakens them.
"It is now a full century since this white-hired old man lay weltering in the blood which he spilled for broken and despised humanity. Let the nation which he loved and the South to which he spoke, reverently listen again today to those words, as prophetic now as then:
"'You had better -- all you people of the South -- prepare yourslves for a settlement of this question. It must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it, and the sooner you commence that preparation, the better for you. You may dispose of me very easily -- I am nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled -- this Negro question, I mean. The end of that is not yet.'"

Strike the Blow
Please note that the substance of the following review has been
used in the review of Stephen Oates's book To Purge This Land in Blood reviewed elsewhere (click see all my reviews). Both books offer a good prospective on the life of John Brown and can be profitably read together. Dubois's book is a decent historical narrative of Brown's life from an earlier time and in a more partisan perspective. Oates book reflects more modern academic methods of analysis and research and tackles the weaknesses in other interpretations. In that sense, Oates book is close to the definitive study of John Brown's life. Most importantly, both books reflect a Northern view of Brown exploits previously long absent from the historical record. My review reflects the need to study an important American fighter for justice and for today's generation to learn some lessons from his life.


I would like to make a few comments on the role of Captain John Brown and his struggle at Harper's Ferry in 1859 in the history of the black liberation struggle. This appropriate as I am writing this review during Black History Month of 2006. Unfortunately John Brown continues to remain one of the very few white heroes of the struggle for black liberation.

From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry.For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown. I, however, was then neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown's (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas wars against the expansion of slavery. If one understands the ongoing nature of his commitment to struggle one can only conclude that his was indeed a man on a mission. Those exploits also render absurd a very convenient myth about his `madness'. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was only the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle against the abolition of slavery in America.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his strategy would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper's Ferry. This missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary.What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist avenging angel in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. In short, he was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years.

Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown. These results are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order and one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871.One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the Chinese Revolution in the 1920's. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown's actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a `madman' still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy which led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming military superior forces. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.


From a modern prospective Brown's strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown's actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. That is still our fight. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of `Jim Crow' and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S.from Brown's time. Black people are now a part of "free labor," and the key to their liberation is in the integrated fight of labor and its allies to establish a government in the intersts of working people. And as Malcolm X said by whatever means it takesNevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown (and of his friend Frederick Douglass). We need to complete the unfinished democratic tasks of the Civil War, not by emulating Brown's exemplary actions but to moving the multi-racial American working class to power. We must know our history. Read this book and find out why.

John Brown: What a great guy
The story of John Brown depicts the life of the famous abolitionist as a loving father of more than a dozen children, husband, and anti-slavery hero. His plots at Harper's Ferry and Kansas are described in great depth, making you feel as if you were a part of his heroic effort to abolish slavery.
From his youth when he first encounters a slave, to his brave efforts to save Kansas, up until his death as a martyr he is portrayed as the very passionate man. While reading, I especially enjoyed the interactions John Brown had with other abolitionists. In particular, the first time he meets Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass and Brown's first encounter is in Brown's house, John's tells Douglass ofhis plans at Harper's Ferry. Douglass says of Brown, " some men made such display of rigid virtue, I should have rejected it as affected, false, and hypocritical, but in John Brown, I felt it to be real as iron or granite." It was neat to see that such celebrated people had so much respect for one another.
The numerous quotes and references make it seem as though you are sitting in the same room as the famed abolitionist. However, with all the dates, people and places it is easy to lose track of everything.
Du Bois's biography is perfect for the history buff or anyone who is studying the Civil War in general and I highly recommend it. Read it to find out the truth behind the failed revolt at Harper's Ferry and learn more about a man who shaped our country.

John Brown: An American Hero
John Brown is often times overlooked as one of America's greatest heroes. His raid on Harper's Ferry was one of the most influential causes for the outbreak of the Civil War. Although the immediate effects of the war were greatly devastating, it hurtled the U.S. over the slavery issue and forward into the future.

Du Bois's biography gives a lengthy & descriptive account of the rebel's life and touched on a lot of info that I was unaware of. Definitely a must-buy for all those studying John Brown specifically, or the Civil War in general.

j. brown
good book.he uses a lot of good quotes directly from john brown.recommended ... Read more