Howard French | Right in the Thick of It: Africa's Uncredited Role at the Heart of Our History.

Howard French is the author of The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide (Liveright, Aug. 26, 2025).
His previous work of non-fiction is titled Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, Liveright, Oct. 2021, named a book of the year by the Financial Times and by Amazon. It was also the winner of the 2022 MAAH Stone Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. For details, see: https://www.howardwfrench.com/

He is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also 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 and Central America and the Caribbean.

HIs most recent prior book is, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Explain China's Push for Global Power, published by Knopf in March 2017: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Under-Heavens-Chinas-Global/dp/0385353324/ref=la_B001HMRXW8_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496843039&sr=1-1

Before that, he published China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. (Knopf 2014) "Second Continent" was named by The New York Times, The Economist and by The Guardian as one of the most notable books of the year.

Other books include A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, (2004) and Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, a collection of my documentary photography, published with original poetry by Qiu Xiaolong. (2012)