Anglophone scholarship on Haiti has expanded sharply, driven by Atlantic and world history and by interest in race, colonialism and migration, while inside Haiti historical work revived once the Duvalier regime and its persecution of intellectuals ended. Sepinwall's premise is that the growth is itself an obstacle: the work is scattered across so many disciplines and journals that even specialists lose track, and newcomers have had no obvious entry point.

The volume reprints fifteen recent articles in three sections, running from colonial Saint-Domingue through the nineteenth century to the occupation, the second independence of 1934 and the earthquake of 2010. Each section opens with an essay giving background, previewing the readings, surveying the surrounding historiography and marking out where research is still needed, and closes with a reading list. Sepinwall is pointed about the gulf between Anglophone and Haitian scholarship, noting how much work by Haitian historians remains untranslated and correspondingly little cited abroad.