Bio group read, 3rd quarter: The Black Count - Book Discussion

Here is the thread for discussion of our 3rd quarter book, The Black Count by Tom Reiss.

All discussion is allowed and welcome here!

Our general discussion thread is located here. http://www.librarything.com/topic/192436

I really enjoyed this.

On page 58, by the age of ten or eleven, well versed in Latin, Greek, geography, history, grammar, philosophy, literature, and mathematics, along with dancing, a musical intrument, fencing and riding.

And we think we're demanding of our youth!

I always wonder how deeply in to all of these subjects they got. Seems like a lot for a child to know, although with a private tutor you can go at a much quicker speed than the large group lessons that children these days tend to receive.

I finished this book toward the beginning of July, so it seems like a long time ago that I read it, but here is my review that highlights some of the reasons I found this book so interesting.

This nonfiction account of the life of Alex Dumas, father of the great writer Alexander Dumas, was a lot of fun to read. Alex Dumas lived at a volatile time in French history. His father was a French aristocrat who went to Sante Domingue (present day Haiti) to find his fortune in the wealthy sugar colony. He had Alex with a black slave on the island. He later brought Alex to France.

The most interesting part of the book to me was actually the experience of Alex Dumas rising to General in Napoleon's army as a black man. I had no idea about the civil rights that the French Revolution introduced. They didn't last through Napoleon's rule, but there was a good decade or so where black men had rights in France and slavery was abolished. I really had no idea.

I also have done fairly minimal reading about the French revolution, and the reading I have done has mainly surrounded the politics in Paris, not much about the fighting that went on. So that aspect was also new to me and pretty interesting, though it got bogged down a few times for my taste.

And then of course, there is the connection to the writer Alexandre Dumas. Alexandre idolized his strong, courageous father. The includes mainly of Alexandre's written memories of his father and draws examples of General Dumas's influence on his son's writing, particularly using the elder Dumas's unjust imprisonment in Naples as the influence for Edmund Dantes's experience in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Overall, this was a fun biography to read of an interesting man set in an important moment in history.

I have been very impressed with the rights of people in France though it seems more a right to freedom and not equality with people of no color.

I finished the book yesterday. I learned a lot. It did nothing to change my opinion of Bonaparte.