Hallward begins from a discrepancy. The 1991 coup against Aristide drew international condemnation and a campaign for his restoration; the coup that removed him again in February 2004 met resignation, indifference, or approval. In the interval a president twice elected by landslide had been rewritten in mainstream commentary as corrupt, aloof and hostile to rights, so that his removal could be presented as a service to Haitian democracy.

The book reconstructs how that was accomplished: sustained misrepresentation in the press, foreign-funded democracy promotion aimed at manufacturing an opposition, and finally armed intervention with American and French backing. Hallward rates it the most effective piece of neo-imperial subversion since the defeat of the Sandinistas, and the more so for scarcely registering as a coup at all.

He also weighs what Lavalas managed and where it failed, setting the movement's emergence in the 1980s against the Duvaliers, the Macoutes, and an elite structurally insulated from the poor majority.