Reiss's 2012 book, "The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo", won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2013 &lt;a href="PEN/Jacqueline%20Bograd%20Weld%20Award%20for%20Biography"&gt;PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography&lt;/a&gt;. It is the biography of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the mixed-race son of a French marquis and a Haitian slave, who became a swashbuckling swordsman in Paris and then a military hero of the French Revolutionary Wars, remaining the highest-ranking black military figure in a Western army until Gen. Colin Powell 200 years later. Dumas's rivalry with Napoleon caused him to leave the Egyptian campaign which Napoleon himself had already abandoned, and he was captured by enemy forces in Naples and thrown in a dungeon for two years. By the time he was released, Napoleon had risen to power and reinstated racism and slavery in France and its colonies, leaving Dumas with few recourses. The debilitation from Dumas's long imprisonment led to his early death, but his life inspired his son Alexandre Dumas to write books such as "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers".