Sudhir Hazareesingh has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is Black Spartacus.
Black Spartacus
Summary
A new interpretation of the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture. Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolution, Toussaint Louverture is the most enigmatic. Though the Haitian revolutionary’s image has multiplied across the globe - appearing on banknotes and in bronze, on T-shirts and in film - the only definitive portrait executed in his lifetime has been lost. Well versed in the work of everyone from Rousseau to Machiavelli, he was nonetheless dismissed by Thomas Jefferson as a “cannibal”. A Caribbean acolyte of the European Enlightenment, Toussaint also nurtured a class of Black Catholic clergymen who became one of the pillars of his rule, while his supporters also believed he communicated with voodoo spirits. And for a leader who once summed up his modus operandi with the phrase “Say little but do as much as possible”, he was a prolific and indefatigable correspondent, famous for exhausting the five secretaries he maintained, simultaneously, at the height of his power in the 1790s. Employing groundbreaking archival research and a keen interpretive lens, Sudhir Hazareesingh restores Toussaint to his full complexity in Black Spartacus. At a time when his subject has, variously, been reduced to little more than a one-dimensional icon of liberation or criticized for his personal failings - his White mistresses, his early ownership of slaves, his authoritarianism - Hazareesingh proposes a new conception of Toussaint’s understanding of himself and his role in the Atlantic world of the late 18th century. Black Spartacus is a work of both biography and intellectual history, rich with insights into Toussaint’s fundamental hybridity - his ability to unite European, African, and Caribbean traditions in the service of his revolutionary aims. Hazareesingh offers a new and resonant interpretation of Toussaint’s racial politics, showing how he used Enlightenment ideas to argue for the equal dignity of all human beings while simultaneously insisting on his own world-historical importance and the universal pertinence of Blackness - a message that chimed particularly powerfully among African Americans. Ultimately, Black Spartacus offers a vigorous argument in favor of “getting back to Toussaint” - a call to take Haiti’s founding father seriously on his own terms and to honor his role in shaping the postcolonial world to come. The Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year - 2020 A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
©2020 Sudhir Hazareesingh (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
In the Shadow of the General
Summary
Charles De Gaulle's leadership of the French while in exile during World War II cemented his place in history. In contemporary France, he is the stuff of legend, consistently acclaimed as the nation's pre-eminent historical figure. But paradoxes abound. For one thing, his personal popularity sits oddly with his social origins and professional background. Neither the Army nor the Catholic Church is particularly well-regarded in France today, as they are seen to represent antiquated traditions and values. So why, then, do the French nonetheless identify with, celebrate, and even revere this austere and devout Catholic, who remained closely wedded to military values throughout his life? In The Shadow of the General resolves this mystery and explains how de Gaulle has come to occupy such a privileged position in the French imagination. Sudhir Hazareesingh's story of how an individual life was transformed into national myth also tells a great deal about the French collective self in the twenty-first century: its fractured memory, its aspirations to greatness, and its manifold anxieties. Indeed, alongside the tale of de Gaulle's legacy, the author unfolds a much broader narrative: The story of modern France.
©2012 Sudhir Hazareesingh (P)2013 Audible, Inc.