W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia (review)

W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia, ed. Gerald Horne and Mary Young. Westport: Greenwood, 2001. 252 pp.

In the usual alphabetized arrangement, this volume by Gerald Horne and Mary Young offers a wide variety of subjects that illuminate the life and career of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, one of the great scholars of all times. The book contains the contributions of 53 contributors and provides over 140 entries that cover such topics as Du Bois's wives and offspring; his views on matters such as the cold war, racism, religion, and black business; as well as events like the Bandung Conference, and the Peace Movement; and individuals such as Ralph Bunche and Mao Zedong.

Horne and Young's encyclopedia may be less revealing to a generation of scholars who know Du Bois's life history and works, but for those who are just becoming familiar with this intellectual giant, W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia is an ideal introduction. The recommended texts, which are offered at the end of each entry, are rather thin in most instances, although the entries "V. I. Lenin" and "Manliness" are among the exceptions. In most instances a single text is suggested. Young's contribution on "Cooperatives" is one such example of this tendency. Early in the twentieth century Du Bois published approximately ten articles in the NAACP Crisis dealing with the issue of cooperative economics. In some of these articles Du Bois reports the relative success of black cooperatives operating in different parts of the country. A summary of some of these articles would have been useful to the student interested in Du Bois's economic views, some of which are summarized in the encyclopedia's introduction provided by David Levering Lewis, who quotes from Du Bois's essay "Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the United States": "[W]ritten ten years before his death, Du Bois left a diagnostic of our present turbo-capitalism, admonishing us that 'the organized effort of American industry to usurp government surpasses anything in modern history'" (xiii). Views such as this are revisited throughout this volume. We learn as much about what others thought of Du Bois and his believers as we do about Du Bois's own ideas.

This is not a bulky book and it will serve as a wonderful guide for new students of W. E. B. Du Bois.