Howard W. French
Howard W. French, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, writes as both a journalist and historian. His primary areas of focus are Africa and East Asia. He is the author of six books, including three works of non-fiction, a work of documentary photography and a book from Norton Liveright about Africa and the birth of modernity. French is also an international affairs columnist with Foreign Policy, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and a published and collected documentary photographer.
His books: The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright. Forthcoming, August 2025). Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War (Liveright, 2021) Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power (Knopf, 2017) China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa (Knopf, 2014) Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life (with Qiu Xiaolong) (Homa & Sekey, 2012), and A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa (Knopf, 2004).