“Very few times have I been able to say that I learned something new about a subject with which I am ostensibly familiar. “Fascinating… For anyone with even a little interest in Haiti, this book is an essential read.” - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette A pleasure to add to my collection of writings about Haiti.” - San Francisco Chronicle “A vigorous, knowledgeable and empathetic account. Those ‘aha' moments were some of the most satisfying passages in this engrossing and deeply-researched book.” - The Miami Herald “An admirable chronicle… Reading Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, I was repeatedly struck by the deep and detailed explanations of things that had never quite made sense to me about Haiti. Dubois also traces a parallel history of bold social experiments on the part of everyday Haitians… Throughout, he makes clear how economic pressures and political crises have left even the county's better leaders hamstrung, without downplaying their failures in fulfilling Haiti's great promise.” - The New Yorker Dubois's Haiti is a land of ceaseless activity, a ferment of suppression and insurrection exacerbated by the mercenary intrusions of foreign powers-in the past century, chiefly the United States. “This excellent, engaging history seeks to strip away centuries of mocking and reductive bias. “A book as welcome as it is timely: a lucid one-volume history of the nation, from Toussaint to the present, anchored in scholarship but rendered as a comprehensive-but-swift narrative for the general reader.” - The Nation Smart, honest, and utterly compelling, this book is the national biography this country and its people deserve.” - Boston Globe “A sweeping, passionate history of Haiti. “Well-written, authoritative history… enriched by careful attention to what Haitian intellectuals have had to say about their country over the last two centuries.” - The New York Times Book Review Revealing what lies behind the familiar moniker 'the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere,' this indispensable book illuminates the foundations on which a new Haiti might yet emerge.Ī New York Times Notable Book of the Year The country's difficulties are inextricably rooted in its founding revolution-the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world the hostility that this rebellion generated among the surrounding colonial powers and the intense struggle within Haiti itself to define its newfound freedom and realize its promise. But as acclaimed historian Laurent Dubois demonstrates, Haiti's troubled present can only be understood by examining its complex past.

A passionate and insightful account by a leading historian of Haiti that traces the sources of the country's devastating present back to its turbulent and traumatic historyĮven before the devastating 2010 earthquake, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption, blamed by many for its own wretchedness.

Haiti by Laurent Dubois