Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture, Sudhir Hazareesingh, 2020
In early 2022 I listened to an excellent podcast episode of Hardcore History by Dan Carlin on the Atlantic Slave trade. After finally finishing the long The Prize, I was able to select a new book to read. During a casual trip to the Politics and Prose bookstore and while perusing through my typical favorite section of history and biography, I noticed Black Spartacus. I immediately drew a connection with the Hardcore History episode because the culminary sketches and details of Carlin’s storytelling was all about the Haitian Revolution, a historical era and subject that I knew (and unfortunately still know) very little about. So to beef up on this, I got the book without any “due diligence” and got to reading. First, a quick summary of the information from the Hardcore History episode is merited since it is linked in my mind to this book. Carlin has touched on slavery in the past, both directly and in the middle of other subjects (such as Assyria, etc), because generically ...