"The dramatic story of W. E. B. Du Bois's reckoning with the betrayal of Black soldiers during World War I--and a new understanding of one of the great twentieth-century writers"-- Provided by publisher.

Prologue -- Part I: Hope. "The present war in Europe is one of the great disasters due to race and color prejudice and it but foreshadows greater disasters in the future." -- "These are the days of confusion and contradiction." -- "... a scientific and exhaustive history of the black man in the Great War ..." -- "I have seen the wound of France..." -- Part II: Disillusion. "The imperative duty of the moment is to fix in history the status of our Negro troops." -- "How great a failure and a failure in what does the World War betoken?" -- "... the madness was divine." -- "If now I do my duty toward America, it is possible America will do her duty toward me." -- Part III: Failure. "... and Evil, a retrogression to Barbarism, a waste, a wholesale murder." -- "I am ashamed at my own lack of foresight." -- "I think I can do something which will have influence on future knowledge with regard to war and colored people." -- "I hate war." -- Epilogue: "... that what I have done ill or never finished can now be handed on to other for endless days to be finished while I rest."