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anbar 's review for:
I'd give it an extra half-star for interesting content--Relates the largely forgotten story of the father of Alexandre Dumas (author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo). Dumas' father was the bastard son of a mooching aristocrat and a black Haitian slave; his father sold him to pay his own passage back to France. Eventually, though, this young man earned himself the rank of General and national hero during the French Revolution--risking his neck during the Terror with his unfashionably humane actions and attitudes--only to have his career stalled later by a jealous and annoyed Napoleon. Very interesting view of an intriguing time when black slaves in the French Carribbean had it worse than slaves in the Deep South at its worst, yet freedmen and mulattos could achieve high social standing in parts of the islands and in France; how France was the first country to pass official racial-equality laws, only to have these sharply revoked in the same lifetime by Napoleon; and, finally, how the fascinating life and experiences of this particular half-black man was the direct source for the character of Edmond Dantes and some of the exploits of the Musketeers.