Saturday, February 21, 2009

Up from History

I recently picked up this new biography of Booker T. Washington, which has been garnering a fair amount of praise. Shelby Steele reviewed it in last week's NYT Sunday Book Review. Steele incorporates his recurring themes of the various masks donned by the oppressed, and again compares and contrasts Washington with W.E.B. DuBois.

Last month Jonathan Yardley reviewed it in the Washington Post. Yardley's review begins: "Few great Americans have been more cruelly treated by history than Booker Taliaferro Washington. He has been mocked, vilified and caricatured, yet by any reasonable measure his life was extraordinary."

HT: Power Line Blog