Toussaint Louverture: A Biography

By Madison Smartt Bell

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, History

Toussaint Louverture (2007) is novelist Madison Smartt Bell's biography of the leader of the Haitian Revolution. Born enslaved in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, Toussaint gained his freedom and in the 1790s rose to command the rebel army, defeating Spanish and British forces and becoming governor of the colony. Bell examines his skill as a general and politician, his complex dealings with France, and his capture by Napoleon's forces and death in a French prison in 1803.

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• Ryan Holiday: “In the last few weeks I read biographies or memoirs of: Fidel Castro, Toussaint Louverture, PT Barnum, Martin Luther, Langston Hughes, Arnold Rothstein, Wyatt Earp, George Washington, Seneca, Sammy Davis Jr, ... Da Vinci, ... Olaudah Equiano, and Joe Biden.”