Dash's survey opens with the land, a mountainous terrain that struck European colonizers as forbidding, then lays down a historical spine running from French rule through independence, the American occupation of the early twentieth century, the Duvalier years, and the present day. That chronology frames all that follows.

A chapter on people and society dwells on the pride Haitians take in a black state born of the only slave revolution that succeeded, and moves across the social range from the elite to peasants and slum dwellers, with attention to Haitians abroad. Religion gets its own treatment, centered on the fusion of Roman Catholicism with vaudou, brought from West Africa. Another remarks on the joy people find despite hard economic conditions.

Media, literature, and language are handled against the political record, with a section on writing in Creole. Later chapters cover vaudou jazz and dance, rara rock, and the folkloric debts of Haitian painting. A chronology and glossary close the book.