ix, 414 pages : 25 cm

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature. Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East -- until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat

Includes bibliographical references (pages 341-403) and index

Prologue, part 1: February 26, 1806 -- Prologue, part 2: January 25, 2007 -- The sugar factory -- The Black Code -- Norman Conquest -- "No one is a slave in France" -- Americans in Paris -- Black Count in the City of Light -- A queen's dragoon -- Summers of revolution -- "Regeneration by blood" -- "The black heart also beats for liberty" -- "Mr. Humanity" -- The battle for the top of the world -- The bottom of the Revolution -- The siege -- The Black Devil -- Leader of the expedition -- "The delirium of his republicanism" -- Dreams on fire -- Prisoner of the Holy Faith Army -- "Citizeness Dumas ... is worried about the fate of her husband" -- The dungeon -- Wait and hope -- The forgotten statue

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography Winner, 2013

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