 Informative
Purchased copies for every READING Mother that I know for Mother's Day.
A must read for those following TV evangelists claiming to know the source of Haiti's calamities.
If anyone has a list of other great books about Haiti please list.
Thanks for sharing Mr Robinson.
 An Unbroken Agony
I read An Unbroken Agony: Haiti from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President and found it interesting reading.
I also found it disturbing in two ways: First, I was troubled by the strong anti-US and anti-France approach. I was troubled by his strong emotions. Second, it disturbed me to realize that his anger at the US and France for kidnapping Aristide may be justified. The difficulty I had was in determining whether what he said was based on fact or emotion. I was forced to decide that while the account is very emotional and therefore likely to be slanted, it is also probably accurate.
The author was an eye witness in the Central African Republic and he did hear from those who talked with the President of that country about Aristide and his house arrest.
I had to conclude that the US and France were culpable of kidnapping a president of a sovereign nation because he posed some kind of a threat to the US? To France? Or was the threat to the elite of Haiti who didn't like his attempted reforms of a very corrupt society and government?
unbelievable
Its world known that America always involve in shady deal,mingling in other countries affairs.This book clearly demonstrated how America involvement in Haiti politic when it doesnt fit the criteria of the establishment.What a shame they never forgive Haiti for what Haiti did two hundred years ago. That country could be a better place by now if they had never interfere on his social agenda.
The Shame of our Time
The book was well written but perhaps a bit biased. Nevertheless, the racism that exists within Haiti itself and from the wealthy "friendly" countries that surround it comes through like a blast of cold air. A must read for those who are serious students of history.
 An Unbroken Agony for the Serious Scholar
Voilà some of Robinson's features in the first pages of his book:
Haiti was called "Saint Domingue" while it was still a French colony. However, Robinson uses some new interpretations of the spelling of this name; which is, after all, not some obscure appellation but the very subject of his book. On page 6 he spells it "St. Dominigue" [sic] with an extra "i" and then "San Dominigue" [sic]. For the rest of the chapter he persists in his misspellings, although he occasionally uses the correct spelling, especially when he is copying and pasting a quote from another source.
On page 13, Robinson is trying to back up his assertions about the brutality of the French colonists. He pastes onto the page a large block quote from the 1990 fictional Caribbean: A Novel by James Michener. Of course, he doesn't mention that his source is nothing more than a recent novel; he employs it as if it were a first-hand eyewitness account from the 1700's. Here, Robinson is either revealing what he really thinks of the reader's intelligence, or he's redefining the term "primary source", which is, after all, the only type of source a serious historian should use. Without surprise, Robinson also doesn't bother with in-text citations of his sources, so you'd never know where he gets most of his "information".
Honestly, I couldn't continue past that gem on page 13, but "Courage!" to those who dare The Agony.
I nominate this work for the Jayson Blair Award for Phony Sources.
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