NEW YORK, March 19, 2025 – Today, Simon & Schuster Audio announced Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor Courtney B. Vance will narrate W.E.B. Du Bois¸ David Levering Lewis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning two-part biography about the legendary civil rights activist. This is the first time this publication has ever been brought to audio and will be available in two volumes, the first of which will release on June 17, 2025.

Says Vance, “As a lover of history, I was drawn to W.E.B. Du Bois’s award-winning biography. Having the chance to reintroduce his legacy to audiophiles by narrating his life story has been an honor and true passion project for me.”

Vance co-founded Bassett Vance Productions with his wife, Angela Bassett, and the production company, helmed by Bassett Vance Productions President Lynnette Ramirez, has exclusively optioned the rights to produce a documentary film based on the biography.

“To have a narrator as talented and passionate as Courtney B. Vance bring W.E.B. Du Bois’s legacy to life is a true publishing event,” said Chris Lynch, President and Publisher of Simon & Schuster Audio. “We’re excited for the opportunity to present David Levering Lewis’s important, beloved, and vital work on audio for the very first time.”

“I can hardly believe this has come to pass,” proclaims David Levering Lewis, biographer and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the works. “Listen to Courtney B. Vance and you shall hear the spoken wisdom of an American colossus, a prophetic man of color in whose ninety-five years all intellectual, political, economic, and racial choices were profoundly explored.”

The W.E.B. Du Bois audiobooks will cover his impact on civil rights and lifelong fight against racial oppression as the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard University. Volume One spans 1868 to 1919 and Volume Two continues for the rest of Du Bois’s life through 1963. Vance’s brilliant narration will make these audiobooks required listening for anyone interested in the life and legacy of a true American hero.

David Levering Lewis is the Martin Luther King Jr., chair in the history at Rutgers University. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Educated at Fisk and Columbia Universities and the London School of Economics and Political Science, Professor Lewis is the author of several acclaimed books, including King: A Biography, When Harlem Was in Vogue, and The Race to Fashoda. He and his wife live in Manhattan.

Courtney B. Vance is an award-winning actor who is a powerful presence from the stage to the screen. From his stunning portrayal of Johnnie Cochran in FX’s The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, to the beloved and pivotal character “Uncle George” in HBO’s critically acclaimed drama horror series Lovecraft Country, to his star turn in NatGeo’s Genius: Aretha as Rev. C.L. Franklin, he has earned two EMMYs, a TONY, a Critics Choice Award, a Black Reel TV Award, and multiple NAACP Image Awards, as well as SAG, Golden Globe, and Hollywood Critics Association nominations.

Courtney’s feature film, Heist 88, earned three NAACP Image Award nominations, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Television Movie for Courtney, Outstanding Television Movie Drama, and won the award for Outstanding Writing for a Television Movie Drama. He is the recipient of the Bounce Trumpet Awards Excellence in Entertainment Honor, the ABFF Honors Award for Excellence in the Arts, and he earned a Grammy nomination for his narration of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s book, ACCESSORY TO WAR.

Courtney’s book, THE INVISIBLE ACHE: Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power, with Dr. Robin L. Smith and written by award-winning journalist Charisse Jones earned him the Author of the Year Award at the National Book Club Conference in 2024. He is also Chairman of the SAG AFTRA Foundation and was announced as part of the 2025 class of notables for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Simon & Schuster Audio is a leading publisher of general interest audiobooks including bestselling fiction, nonfiction, business/finance, self-improvement, inspiration, language learning programs, original audiobook productions, and children’s titles. In addition to a list that includes such unparalleled authors as Colleen Hoover, Jack Carr, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Walter Isaacson, David McCullough, Jason Reynolds, and Fareed Zakaria, Simon & Schuster Audio has published original audiobooks from Bob Woodward, Christina Lauren, William Kent Krueger, Julie Chen Moonves, J.R. Ward, Jeneva Rose. Their audiobooks, among others, have won nine Grammy Awards and earned forty-one Grammy nominations since 1989. For more information about Simon & Schuster Audio, visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com/audio

Simon & Schuster, a global leader in general interest publishing, is dedicated to providing the best in fiction and nonfiction for readers of all ages, and in all printed, digital and audio formats. Its distinguished roster of authors includes many of the world’s most popular and widely recognized writers, and winners of the most prestigious literary honors and awards. It is home to numerous well-known imprints and divisions such as Simon & Schuster, Scribner, Atria Books, Gallery Books, Adams Media, Avid Reader Press, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing and Simon & Schuster Audio and international companies in Australia, Canada, India, the United Kingdom, and VBK in the Netherlands and Belgium. It proudly brings the works of its authors to readers in more than 200 countries and territories. For more information visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.

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