Reiss offers a start, but we have yet to reach the end of Dumas’s story. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo By 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. The past has no choice but to rely on writers and readers. At the end of all these travels, Reiss returns with an account that, in its essentials, does not differ from John Gallaher’s 1997 monograph, General Alexandre Dumas: Soldier of the French Revolution. The biggest problem, though, is that this story frequently seems to be less about Dumas than Reiss. All too often, when Reiss turns a phrase, he turns it towards a cliché. It is not that he gets the general history of the revolution and Napoleon wrong it’s just that he does not get it right enough. Such errors weigh less than other, more elusive problems with the historical canvas painted by Reiss. Reiss, a professional journalist, gets bits and pieces of European history wrong. They also allow Reiss - though with less literary panache than Dumas and, at times, an equally cavalier treatment of history - to introduce us to the world that, come 1789, replaced the Old Regime. These experiences, we discover, were as remarkable and romantic as the man who related them to his son. Reiss in turn emphasizes that Dumas’s novels were fueled by his father’s own experiences in earlier wars.
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