Description: Gilroy offers a new understanding of W. E. B. Du Bois' intellectual and political legacy and revitalizes the study of African American culture. He traces the shifting character of black intellectual and social movements, and shows how we can construct an account of moral progress that reflects today's complex realities.
Brief description: Paul Gilroy holds the Anthony Giddens Professorship in Social Theory at the London School of Economics.
Review Quotes: Paul Gilroy's most important gift to cultural criticism is the deft manner in which he finds novel ways to explicate his great concern: the interweaving of ethics and aesthetics, through the example of the African American tradition. In Darker than Blue, Gilroy brilliantly examines some basic tensions within African American culture--in particular the changing relation, over the past half-century especially, between expressions of group consciousness and atomistic individualism. Gilroy is delightfully curious and rigorously analytical, making this book a pleasure to read and to argue with. It reaffirms his position as one of the leading cultural critics of our time.--Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University