Publishers Weekly
★ 02/20/2023
In this stirring intellectual history, Williams (Torchbearers of Democracy), an African American studies professor at Brandeis University, suggests that the failure of WWI to advance Black Americans’ civil rights profoundly affected sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and fueled his “maturation into an uncompromising peace activist.” Du Bois had encouraged Black men to enlist, believing that through “patriotism and military sacrifice, democracy would become a reality for African Americans.” These calls, Williams notes, earned Du Bois criticism in the Black press as a “traitor,” and he was proven wrong by postwar massacres of Black people across the U.S. during 1919’s “Red Summer.” Williams discusses how these events disillusioned Du Bois through a close reading of his manuscript The Black Man and the Wounded World, contending this unfinished account of WWI constituted Du Bois’s “atonement” for supporting the conflict and that his wrestling with its legacy sharpened his critique of white supremacy and imperialism. Williams convincingly renders Du Bois as a tragic figure whose optimism was dashed by the intransigence of racism, adding poignancy to a story about the limits and fragility of American democracy. At once a moving character study and a deeply researched look at a dispiriting era from the country’s past, this is history at its most vivid. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"Illuminating . . . Deeply researched, crisply written . . . By rendering this story in such rich archival detail, Williams’s book is a fitting coda to Du Bois’s unfinished history of Black Americans and the First World War." —Matthew Delmont, The New York Times
"Williams wisely refrains from . . . judging his subject, instead allowing Du Bois’s biography to unfold in all its messy, captivating, inspiring complexity. Specialists and general readers alike will profit from Williams’s sensitive reconstruction of the most challenging period, ethically and politically, of Du Bois’s long life." —Vaughn Rasberry, The Washington Post
"Drawing on extensive archives, Williams skillfully pieces together the book that Du Bois could not finish. Details personalize the narrative, which is one of remarkable dedication . . . In The Wounded World, Chad L. Williams has written . . . an account of failure that nonetheless succeeds in bringing Du Bois's brilliance, 'formidable ego' and many contradictions to light." —Douglas Field, Times Literary Supplement
"Du Bois meticulously documented 'a devastating catalog of systemic racial injustice,' Williams writes, while showing 'an ability to distill it into concise, lively, accessible prose.' The same goes for this book, which weaves a propulsive narrative from a tangle of facts and forces." —New Yorker
"My favorite kind of history makes you feel you are living inside every moment the author creates. This can only happen when the fruits of rigorous research are assembled with the flair of a novelist. [Chad L. Williams] does all that and more in his riveting new biography of [Du Bois] . . . I can only hint at the number of beguiling moments that fill the pages of this great book . . . This gripping history is a cause for celebration." —Charles Kaiser, The Guardian
"Moving . . . Williams tells the story of Du Bois's failed efforts to write a 'definitive' history of Black soldiers during World War I with compassion, insight, and amazing research. In this regard, this book joins older classics on Du Bois . . . Gripping." —Randal Maurice Jelks, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Stirring intellectual history . . . Williams convincingly renders Du Bois as a tragic figure whose optimism was dashed by the intransigence of racism, adding poignancy to a story about the limits and fragility of American democracy. At once a moving character study and a deeply researched look at a dispiriting era from the country’s past, this is history at its most vivid." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A compelling account . . . Williams, like Du Bois before him, has done the important work of making sure that history is recorded and remembered . . . A solid bulwark against efforts to simplify and sanitize history." —Kirkus Reviews
“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. We can now write Q.E.D. to Chad Williams’s brilliant The Wounded World.” —David Levering Lewis, author of W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“Chad Williams managed to write a thoroughly gripping story of failure. In light of an American Century defined by war, the durability of racism, and the elusive quest for democracy, Williams’s account of W. E. B. 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. The unfinished manuscript haunted its author as much as its subject matter haunted the world. Du Bois’s romance with martial symbols and his unquenchable ambition clashed with his antiwar sensibilities and the racial terror he witnessed in the military abroad and in the streets at home—leaving America’s greatest intellectual in a state we’ve never seen: deeply wounded and vulnerable. A genuine masterpiece.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
"In The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War, Chad Williams approaches the historical archives anew—with passionate rigor—to better understand how a crucial moment of international crisis impacted the greatest African American intellectual of the twentieth century. Through Williams’s insightful portrait, we not only see the immense splendors of W.E.B. Du Bois. Here, we see Du Bois-the-man, one whose devotion to Black people—and to his American nation—was constantly tested, but never faltered." —Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
“I read The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War for pleasure—the pleasure of rigorous scholarship and narrative nuance, of the magisterial W. E. B. Du Bois in flesh and blood. In this extraordinary book, Chad Williams exploits the voluminous archive Du Bois collected in his ultimately failed quest to ease the tension between being Black and being American, a quest Williams presents in poignant clarity.” —Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People
Pulitzer Prize–winning author David Levering Lewis
Until Chad L.Williams’s heroic accumulation of sources, his stunning mastery of them, and his uncanny reckoning with his subject’s ego, W. E. B. Du Bois’s unfinished history of the Great War remained a mystery. We can now write ‘QED’ to Professor Williams’s brilliant The Wounded World.”
Kirkus Reviews
2022-11-22
A compelling account of the iconic civil rights leader’s effort to make sense of World War I and its meaning for racial equality and democracy.
Williams, a professor of African and African American studies at Brandeis and author of Torchbearers of Democracy, details W.E.B. Du Bois’ multidecade struggle to research, write, and publish a comprehensive history of African American participation in World War I. Lacking Du Bois’ fully realized history, Williams presents readers with the next best thing, incorporating his subject’s research, chapter outlines, and excerpts to provide a more accurate and expansive account of the war. The author drives the narrative forward by showing readers how the stakes of the project evolved over time. What began as a narrow history expanded to include documentation of the pervasive, overt, and institutionalized racism within the Army, the violence against Black citizens at home that exploded after the war, and the war’s origins in the European colonization of Africa. This was no mere academic exercise for Du Bois, who was haunted by his own role encouraging Black Americans to “close ranks” and set aside “personal grievances” in support of the war effort, anticipating that service would translate into a closer approximation of equality in the U.S. The history would be, in part, a means of ensuring that others did not make the same mistake. The Du Bois that emerges from this illuminating book is fully human. He fails, he dissembles, but he never stops fighting for justice and equality. His insights are as timely today as they were a century ago. In an otherwise thoughtful and nuanced book, the women in Du Bois’ life are less fully fleshed. Shirley Graham, Du Bois’ second wife and a writer, composer, and activist in her own right, merits a more thorough discussion. Nevertheless, Williams, like Du Bois before him, has done the important work of making sure that history is recorded and remembered.
A solid bulwark against efforts to simplify and sanitize history.
