An Author and the Blogs

Mary Dudziak recommends, and qualifies, The Penguin Blog's"What Makes a Good Author Blog." There's no simple answer to whether a blog is an asset or a liability to an author, but blogs certainly can create discussion about an author's work.

Ed Blum's new book, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, is a good case in point. Fifteen years ago, I treated Du Bois as a serious religious thinker in The Social Gospel in Black and White, but the most important recent work on him, David Levering Lewis's prize-winning two volume biography and, even, Philip Zuckerman's Du Bois on Religion, have read him as anti-religious. He certainly attacked conventional religion and religious institutions with considerable zeal. So W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet is rowing against the tide, but it is creating a lot of waves.

Blum, who's at San Diego State, was featured at History News Network as one of its Top Young Historians in late May. Since then, his new book on Du Bois has been generating discussion at Phil's bald blogging, miscellaneous musing, and random reflection, Edward Carson's The Proletarian, Paul Harvey's Religion and American History, and Eric Redmond's A Man from Issachar. I'm looking forward to reading it.