Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). He also mastered the art of maneuvering between the great powers, but successes were often pyrrhic.Ī groundbreaking biography that underscores the difficulties of leading slaves to freedom and avoiding violent extremes.

He deftly navigated a course between local representatives of French political factions and the different strands of racial politics on the island. He fought to master the necessary skills of speech and writing, and he amassed significant landholdings out of the ruins of continuing warfare. Girard argues that what Louverture wanted above all was to be recognized as French and treated with the honor and respect due a Frenchman. He was also an inconsistent opponent of the large plantation owners and the other elements of power in Haiti’s racial hierarchy. He was not always an opponent of slavery, nor was he averse to owning slaves himself. Louverture’s views and aims were not fixed. Girard develops these high points in his subject’s life in terms of the historical context. Louverture did indeed lead Haiti’s slaves in a revolt for freedom, was involved in their emancipation from France, rose to become general and governor-general of the island, and defeated an army of France’s battle-hardened troops sent against him by Napoleon, but at the cost of his own life. Girard’s fine-grained approach enriches a picture that is often drawn in highly polarized shades.

Haiti: The Tumultuous History-From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation, 2010, etc.) detailed research on both sides of the Atlantic underpins this fresh portrayal, in which the author successfully dismisses much mythology about who Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803) was, what he stood for, and what he achieved. A biography of the man who challenged the power of the leading empires of his day and led the only successful slave revolt in human history.

Toussaint Louverture by Philippe Girard