Haiti Will Not Perish: A Recent History

The world’s first independent black republic, Haiti was forged in the fire of history’s only successful slave revolution. Yet more than two hundred years later, the full promise of the revolution—a free country and a free people—remains unfulfilled. Home for more than a decade to one of the world’s largest UN peacekeeping forces, Haiti has a tumultuous political culture—buffeted by coups and armed political partisans—that combined with economic inequality and environmental degradation, created immense difficulties even before a devastating earthquake leveled the capital of Port-au-Prince in 2010, killing tens of thousands of people.

This grim tale, however, is not the whole story. In this moving and detailed history, Michael Deibert, who has spent two decades reporting on Haiti, chronicles the heroic struggles of Haitians to build their longed-for country in the face of overwhelming odds. Based on years of interviews with Haitian political leaders, international diplomats, peasant advocates, gang leaders, and hundreds of ordinary Haitians, Deibert’s book provides a vivid, complex, and challenging analysis of Haiti’s recent history.