The Black Count

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite novels (and will also be on my Great Books list). This book is about the father of Alexandre Dumas, General Alex Dumas.

Excellent. I’ve come to love reading books about an individual as their life weaves through incredible history. This book is about the novelist Alexandre Dumas’ father, General Alex Dumas, a mixed-race swashbuckling stud who grew up amongst the horrors of slavery in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and made his way to France to be both honored and then shunned by Napoleon. His life formed the basis of much of what we read in his son’s novels of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Fascinating life and story. I learned a ton about France in the late 18th, early 19th century.