Best-Selling Non-Fiction
Explore insightful non-fiction books that have topped the charts, offering a blend of recent and historical best-sellers throughout the week.
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“The definitive biography of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, leader of the only successful slave revolt in world history
In Toussaint Louverture, Philippe Girard reveals the dramatic story of how Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman to revolutionary hero. In 1791, the unassuming Louverture masterminded the only successful slave revolt in history. By 1801, he was general and governor of Saint-Domingue, and an international statesman who forged treaties with Britain, France, Spain, and the United States-empires that feared the effect his example would have on their slave regimes. Louveture’s ascendency was short-lived, however. In 1802, he was exiled to France, dying soon after as one of the most famous men in the world, variously feared and celebrated as the “Black Napoleon.”
As Girard shows, in life Louverture was not an idealist, but an ambitious pragmatist. He strove not only for abolition and independence, but to build Saint-Domingue’s economic might and elevate his own social standing. He helped free Saint-Domingue’s slaves yet immediately restricted their rights in the interests of protecting the island’s sugar production. He warded off French invasions but embraced the cultural model of the French gentility.
In death, Louverture quickly passed into legend, his memory inspiring abolitionist, black nationalist, and anti-colonialist movements well into the 20th century. Deeply researched and bracingly original, Toussaint Louverture is the definitive biography of one of the most influential people of his era, or any other.”
Written by: WRBH
Explore insightful non-fiction books that have topped the charts, offering a blend of recent and historical best-sellers throughout the week.
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WRBH 88.3 FM, Radio for the Blind and Print Handicapped, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and is the only full-time reading service on the FM dial in the United States. At WRBH, our mission is to turn the printed word into the spoken word so that the blind and print handicapped receive the same ease of access to current information as their sighted peers.