Logan treats the two states sharing Hispaniola as a single problem. He opens with the physical island - the gap between temperatures at Furcy and at sea level in Port-au-Prince, the short and irregular rivers, the Artibonite that floods and then dwindles, the porous limestone that stores no water and the deforestation that has made run-off worse.

He turns then to the people, setting out how conquest and slavery produced the island's population and the vocabulary of mixture attached to it, and why the near-total disappearance of the Taino, together with the small number of Spanish settlers, left Santo Domingo less Hispanicized and less severe about color than the mainland colonies.

The history that follows is one of entanglement and outside pressure: Toussaint's constitution claiming the whole island, later cited by Haitian rulers as warrant for repeated invasions; the French withdrawal of 1809; and the American customs receivership, which by 1912 had marines ashore and Washington choosing Dominican presidents.