[Carefully] researched and documented, sympathetic toward the subject yet candid about his failings, [W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography] is a sober record of the long career of William Du Bois. The biography concentrates on his adult life, giving a detailed account of the teacher, writer, and political activist and very little about his personal life. This lacks the warmth that characterizes Virginia Hamilton's fiction, but it makes a particular contribution in placing the events of Du Bois' life not just in the stream of black history but against the background of what was happening in the United States and how it inevitably affected what was happening to William Du Bois.

Zena Sutherland, in her review of "W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography," in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press; © 1972 by The University of Chicago), Vol...