I'd been wanting to get into W.E.B. Du Bois' works for some time, and when I saw this beautiful "Penguin Vitae" edition of The Souls of Black Folk: With the Talented Tenth and the Souls of White Folk, I knew I just had to have it.

Onto the contents of the book, there's a very nice introduction written by Ibram X. Kendi (author of How to Be an Antiracist, among many other greats), followed by some suggestions for further reading. After this, we finally begin The Souls of Black Folk.

Throughout the book, Du Bois swings back and forth between an almost poetic prose and a more traditional textbook style. Some may find this to be disjointed and/or annoying, but I personally enjoyed it. Books from this era and before tend to lose me off and on, especially denser works, however, I found myself laser-focused on Du Bois' observations and findings.

Comparing all these pages, written over a century ago, to the world as it exists today, we as a society really haven't progressed much.

W.E.B. Du Bois was an incredibly brilliant man, and while he wasn't without his own blind-spots and shortcomings, I would say that The Souls of Black Folk: With the Talented Tenth and the Souls of White Folk is a timeless, invaluable work of sociology, as well as an essential piece of African-American writing. 

I hope more and more people read the works of Du Bois and other great Black minds.