![]() There are plenty of quotes from letters of General Dumas that bring his personality to life. ![]() Yet Reiss obviously researched this meticulously-he doesn't just go by his son's memoir, but sought out confirmations and contradictions and complications in the story. So many of the events in this biography sound like out and out adventure fiction. He enlisted as a common soldier and when the French Revolution briefly swept away race as a bar, he rose to the rank of what would be considered today a four star general-commanding at one point over 50,000 troops-and was a genuine hero. Son of a marquis and a slave, born in Haiti, who his own father pawned into slavery, then redeemed and brought to Paris. But I didn't know about his father Alex Dumas. I knew of his son, who wrote the play that was the basis for Camille and Verdi's La Traviata. ![]() ![]() I knew that this 19th century author was both French and black-yet nevertheless celebrated even in his lifetime. ![]() I haven't read his books, but I've watched several adaptations and homages to them, everything from toons to allusions on Star Trek. I'm sure a lot of people are going to think the same thing reading this biography: "How in the world did I not know about this man?" Everyone knows Alexandre Dumas, père-or at least knows his The Three Musketeers. ![]()
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