Four books published between 2006 and 2012 are weighed here as evidence that scholarship on Haiti has outgrown the single-volume survey. Geggus credits Laurent Dubois with a readable synthesis that balances foreign predation against domestic authoritarianism, while faulting it for saying little about when and why Haiti became poor, and for passing over world coffee prices, currency devaluation and soil erosion. Philippe Girard's account of the war of independence earns praise for archival reach and doubt where it minimises race and Bonaparte's intentions towards slavery. Jeremy Popkin's study of the burning of Cap Francais in 1793 is judged richer in its particulars than in the thesis framing it, since emancipation had other necessary causes. John Garrigus's work on free people of colour, resting on nine thousand notarial documents, draws the warmest assessment. Running through the review is a complaint that writing about Haiti has too often preferred statement-making to archival labour.