Howard W. French is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a former foreign correspondent and senior writer for The New York Times, having worked as a bureau chief in China, Japan, West and Central Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. He is the author of several acclaimed works of non-fiction.
His most recent book, The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (2025), was released this August. His previous work, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World (2021), was named a Book of the Year by The Financial Times and Amazon, and received both the 2022 MAAH Stone Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award.
French’s earlier books include Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Explain China’s Push for Global Power (2017) and China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa (2014), which was recognised as one of the most notable books of the year by The New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a global affairs columnist at Foreign Policy, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.
United States of America