Instruct: Classify a given review into positive or negative sentiment.
Query: Great window on a harsh but beautiful past

Knight writes like a good sociologist. His focus is signal events and social change, always well explained, with quantitative measures of scope and impact. The book is island focused -- with little attention on the Caribbean's mainland enclaves of Belize, the Guyanas, or Suriname. But it gives a good foundation for understanding the diverging paths of numerous island states. It gives a feel for the impact of anti-plantation attitudes after the Haitian revolution, the repressive terror which that revolution unleashed in planters and colonial governors across the Caribbean, the rise of community and labor organization, the diverse forms of post-colonial rule, and the difficult trials of many economic models. Though the survey ends around 1990, it's a great window on everything that came before.