It is a hugely difficult feat of juggling, but Ponting somehow manages to keep all the balls in the air. His methodical approach and lively style result in a very clear account of an otherwise confusing period of frenetic diplomacy

Compelling revisionist history

[A] fascinating picture of double-dealing, misread signals of intent and naked self-interest which afflicted every major capital over a crucial period

This is by far the best book I've come across on the subject of the extermination of Hungary's Jews

Very, very rarely you read something that knocks the breath out of you... This masterpiece does

A starting point and an intellectual inspiration ... a classic of masterly historical writing.

James is not afraid to touch his pen with the flame of ardent personal feeling - a sense of justice, love of freedom, admiration for heroism, hatred for tyranny - and his detailed, richly documented and dramatically written book holds a deep and lasting interest.

Revolutionarily, the book abandoned the old narrative of black victimhood in favour of accenting the agency of the formerly enslaved who, fuelled by a desire for liberty, fought to achieve autonomy.

The standard and the main text through which the Haitian revolution is studied ... a book I've read back to back many times ... An incredibly brilliant book, an undeniably magnificent contribution to scholarship.

Reading and rereading The Black Jacobins, I am struck by its incredible wit and humanity, and James' determination to write a history of slavery in the Caribbean in which people of African descent appear as thinking, feeling human agents - in other words, as the protagonists of their own history and not background characters in an essentially European story.