Probably the best book written about Haitian history after its independence... a thorough, thoughtful, extremely well-researched work.

Handbook of Latin American Studies

Step by step, [Nicholls] guides us through the various historical time periods of Haitian political and national development, illuminating each one of them by a cogent and learned discussion of the main idea and ideologies that accompanied them.

The Political Quarterly

Rich in subject matter and eminently relatable, this book is also a fine work of scholarship. The more than 1,200 footnotes are models of clarity and relevance; the bibliography and index seem scrupulously accurate... While each generation must rewrite its own history, as Nicholls remarks, no book on Haiti for a long time to come will probably be able to ignore the analysis he here provides.

Ethnic and Racial Studies