David Levering Lewis is Martin Luther King, Jr., Professor in the history department 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, Mr. Lewis is the author of several acclaimed books, including King, A Biography, When Harlem Was in Vogue, The Race to Fashoda, and W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, which won the Pulitzer, Parkman, and Bancroft prizes, and was a finalist for The National Book Award and The National Book Critics Circle Award.

He and his wife live in Manhattan.