First of its kind.(BEHIND THE BOOK: African American National Biography)(Interview)

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is never not on the move. When we spoke with him in November, he was fresh from a sit-down with Oprah and en route to Jersey to conduct his own interview, with his 94-year-old father, for the sequel to the 2006 PBS documentary African American Lives.

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Our interview was regarding another of the cultural critic's projects set to debut in early February: the eight-volume African American National Biography (AANB), which he coedited with fellow Harvard professor Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Published by the Oxford University Press (OUP) in collaboration with Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, which Gates heads, the AANB spans five centuries and holds 4000 entries by some 1000 …