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The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
The Black Count Glory Revolution Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo Author:Tom Reiss By the author of the internationally bestselling biography The Orientalist, The Black Count brings to life one of history?s great forgotten heroes: a man almost unknown today yet with a personal story that is strikingly familiar. �His swashbuckling exploits appear in The Three Musketeers, and his triumphs and ultimate tragic fate inspired The Co... more »unt of Monte Cristo. �His name is Alex Dumas.� Father of the novelist Alexandre Dumas, Alex has become, through his son's books, the model for a captivating modern protagonist: the wronged man in search of justice.
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Born to a black slave mother and a fugitive white French nobleman in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but then made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy.
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He was only 32 when he was given command of 53,000 men, the reward for series of triumphs that many regarded as impossible, and then topped his previous feats by leading a raid up a frozen cliff face that secured the Alps for France.� It was after his subsequent heroic service as Napoleon?s cavalry commander that Dumas was captured and cast into a dungeon?and a harrowing ordeal commenced that inspired one of the world?s classic works of fiction.
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The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world?s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.� Drawing on hitherto unknown documents, letters, battlefield reports and Dumas' handwritten prison diary, The Black Count is a groundbreaking masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.