THE BLACK COUNT: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo.

New York:: Crown,, (2012). Hardcover first edition -. Fine in fine dust jacket.. First printing. Pulitzer Prize winning biography of General Alexandre Dumas, the father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas. In discussing this book, Reiss comments that "Napoleon buried the memory of this great man, the son of a black slave who led more than 50,000 men at the height of the French Revolution and then stood up to the megalomaniacal Corsican in the deserts of Egypt. Letters and eyewitness accounts show that Napoleon came to hate Dumas not only for his stubborn defense of principle but for his swagger and stature - over six feet tall and handsome - and for the fact that he was a black man idolized by the white French army.. . I first came across Gen. Dumas's life in the memoir of his son Alexandre, the novelist. Alex Dumas was born in Saint Domingue, later Haiti, the son of a black slave and a good-for-nothing French aristocrat who came to the islands to make a quick killing and instead barely survived. In fact, to get back to France in order to claim an inheritance, he 'pawned' his black son into slavery, but then he bought him out, brought him to Paris, and enrolled him in the royal fencing academy. . What really stuck with me from reading the memoir was the love that shows through from the son, the writer, for his father, the soldier. When he grew up, young Alexandre took a greater sort of revenge, infusing his father's life and spirit into fictional characters like Edmond Dantes and D'Artagnan." Also awarded the 2013 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography.Double page map, notes, selected bibliography, index. ix. 414 pp.