The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois's collection of essays on race draws on his own life as an African American, and some pieces first ran in The Atlantic Monthly. The opening chapter, Of Our Spiritual Strivings, sets out his case that Black Southerners need the vote, a good education and equal justice, and uses the term double consciousness for the sense of always seeing oneself through the eyes of others. It also introduces the veil, a metaphor tied to the color line. The second chapter covers the years 1861 to 1872 and the Freedmen's Bureau. Every chapter opens with two epigraphs, lines of poetry and the score of a spiritual. Published in 1903, it is counted among the early works of sociology.

Barack Obama counted it among his most influential all-time favorites, according to his Facebook page and a 2008 New York Times interview.