The Black Count: The True Story of a Hero, a Man, and The French Revolution

Tom Reiss's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (Crown, 2012), will be our guide as we study the extraordinary life and times of General Alex Dumas, a black man born on a sugar plantation, son of a ne'er-do-well French aristocrat and a slave mother. Through Dumas’s eyes we will take a fresh look at the brutal world of slavery on the French colony of Saint-Domingue, Haiti, the decadence of 1780s Paris during the Enlightenment, the forces behind the French Revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy, the Reign of Terror, and the rise of Napoleon. We will follow Dumas’s military career and his heroic triumphs as a young soldier and officer, his meteoric one-year rise from sergeant to general, and his service as Napoleon’s cavalry commander. We will learn and discuss how Dumas’s son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, drew upon his father's life story and adventures in his novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. This book has been described as a groundbreaking masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. It will teach us something new on every page. Join us in exploring it.