Burning All Illusions: Writings from the Nation on Race

W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Sherwood Anderson, Ralph Ellison, Randall Kennedy and Patricia J. Williams are among the writers and thinkers anthologized in Burning All Illusions: Writings from The Nation on Race. Edited by commentator and Smith College African-American studies professor Paula Giddings (In Search of Sisterhood), the book collects pieces published in the magazine from the Reconstruction period through this year, including a nuanced 1923 sketch of four people who straddle the color line, a 1916 letter to the editor in defense of lynching, Hoyt W. Fuller's 1963 report on the ""Rise of the Negro Militant,"" Gerald Early on blacks and sports, and much more. (June)