Although the stories from the late 19th and 20th centuries were tiresome to me, as the book resembles more of a historical record than an informative tome, the chapters are neatly divided into rulers and eras, and it is easy to skip a period in time if you wish to do so.

Heinl understands perfectly the alternately placid and ultra-violent tendencies of the Haitian people, but tended to focus a bit more on the guts and blood, which I found unappealing, but then again, this is history, not a cultural exposé. He disappointed me by understanding perfectly the underlying motives and aspirations of the Duvaliers, and yet failing to record the necklacing and violence openly embraced by Aristide himself, buying into the politically correct view of the time that all Haitians were overjoyed with the intervention, and ready to start democratizing immediately.

Another con was that Heinl expects his readers to understand the mixture of French and Creole that is used quite regularly throughout the book. For example, does the average American reader know what "teledyol" is? (The network of gossip-mongers that predicts, often correctly, every coup d'état in the nation's history.) Also, the book does not bother to spare the reader the details of such lovely subjects as decapitation, infanticide, suicide, slave torture, impalement, and child abuse.

The chapters on the two Duvaliers, Papa Doc and Baby Doc, and the post-Duvalier era were particularly interesting and enjoyable. The book stops short of the present-day situation, as it ends in 1995 on a hopeful note with President René Preval at the opening of a public works project. That hope and optimism that characterized so much of the Haitian population during the U.S. intervention in 1994 has long since been discarded, but one can at least understand the historical aspect of Haiti's inability to achieve stability through this book.