Review: "The First and Last King of Haiti" — A Biography of Henry Christophe

A fascinating, in-depth, and meticulously researched biography of Haiti's revolutionary-turned-king.

Daut shows us, often for the first time, the various personal, cultural, political, and financial forces that created the controversial future king in all his complexity, as well as the specific contours of his leadership—and his failures.

From a place of heartfelt agony, she deploys magnificent archival detective work to catalog the horrors of enslavement and the slave-based economy from which sprang the world-historic Haitian revolution.