More than fifty men have led Haiti, and the standard account remembers them, when it remembers them, as a procession of grafters. Destin doubts that verdict can hold and reviews seven whose work outlasted them. Christophe built the Citadelle and corresponded with British abolitionists; Boyer reunited a country split between kingdom and republic and paid the passage of Black emigrants from the United States; Geffrard restored relations with the Vatican and secured American recognition in 1862; Salomon founded the postal service and a central bank; Hyppolite imported the iron market that still anchors commerce in the capital; Estimé opened the civil service to a rising Black middle class; Magloire presided over the tourist boom later called the Golden Age. Drawing on biography, newspapers, stamp history and popular song, Destin notes that a Kreyòl song about a fallen Panama hat preserves Hyppolite better than most archives do.