The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

I spent part of the summer of 2012 reading — and falling deeply in love with — Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo. Talk about perfect timing: soon after I finished reading that book, The Black Count was released to great critical acclaim and went on to win the 2013 Pulitzer in the Biography or Autobiography category. Tom Reiss dug into a historical figure who’s been largely forgotten: Dumas’s father, General Alex Dumas.

Although Alexandre Dumas (the author) would grow up experiencing poverty and racism, his father’s rise through the ranks during the French Revolution are almost inconceivable. General Dumas was born in Saint-Domingue (what is now Haiti), the son of a slave and a plantation owner. His father doted on him and took him to live in France, and though General Dumas would eventually renounce his father, he came of age during an idealistic period in France…