Opening in the rubble of the January 2010 earthquake, Girard works back across five centuries to ask why Haiti is poor, unstable and violent. His answer is that the collapse is recent and man-made, beginning with the devastation of the war of independence and reaching crisis proportions only under the Duvaliers. Beneath the rapid turnover of presidents he identifies three constants: racial antagonism inherited from slavery and still alive between darker and lighter skinned Haitians, a political class that treats office as plunder, and a habit of expecting foreigners to lift the country out of poverty. Chapters run from Columbus and the plantation colony through the revolution, the American occupations, the Duvalier years and the Aristide and Préval presidencies. The account draws on Haitian and diaspora newspapers, United States congressional testimony on post-earthquake aid, figures on non-governmental organizations, and the author's own travel and photographs. First published in 2005 as Paradise Lost.