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Author, scholar, journalist and commentator.

Howard
W. French

Former New York Times senior writer. Chronicler of Africa, Asia, and the African diaspora. Author of five acclaimed works of history and reportage.

Howard W. French

Howard W. French

"A magisterial account… a towering achievement."

Publishers Weekly, starred review — The Second Emancipation

"He may have made his name as a journalist, but he is a historian now… Howard's status as a leading historian of the African world is now inarguable."

Africa In the World — The Second Emancipation

"French writes with the elegance you would expect from a distinguished foreign correspondent, and with the passion of someone deeply committed to providing a corrective. This is not a comfortable or comforting read, but it is beautifully done; a masterpiece even."

The Guardian
About

Howard W. French is a journalist, author, and professor whose writing spans five decades of reporting from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America. A former bureau chief and senior writer for The New York Times, he is the author of five books that have reshaped how readers understand the modern world.

He writes a widely read column on Africa and global affairs for Foreign Policy and teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His work has received numerous honors and been cited among the most important writing on Africa and the African diaspora in a generation. Learn more →

6 Books published
40+ Years reporting
5 Continents covered
About Howard →

Books

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The Second Emancipation
2025
The Second Emancipation
A sweeping work of history that traces the life of Kwame Nkrumah — Ghana's founding president and the father of Pan-Africanism — and the extraordinary moment…
Born in Blackness
2021
Born in Blackness
A landmark reframing of world history that places Africa — not Europe — at the very center of modernity. French argues that the Age of Discovery was driven not…
Everything Under the Heavens
2017
Everything Under the Heavens
An essential guide to understanding China's rise and its ambitions in Asia, rooted in a deep reading of Chinese history and culture. French shows how China's…
China's Second Continent
2014
China's Second Continent
An on-the-ground investigation into China's sweeping expansion across Africa, told through the lives of Chinese migrants, African entrepreneurs, and local…
Disappearing Shanghai
2012
Disappearing Shanghai
A stunning visual elegy for old Shanghai, captured before the wrecking ball of modernization erased it forever. French's black-and-white photographs document…
A Continent for the Taking
2004
A Continent for the Taking
A vivid, deeply reported account of sub-Saharan Africa drawn from French's years as the New York Times bureau chief for West and Central Africa. Moving from…

Recent Writing

Weekly Columns →
Foreign Policy
What Trump’s Last-Gasp Foreign Policy Means for the Global Order
March 12, 2026
Foreign Policy
The Reductive Rhetoric of the Iran War
March 5, 2026
Foreign Policy
Why Is America So Obsessed With Cuba?
February 26, 2026
Foreign Policy
The Soviet Lessons for Trump’s Greenland Gambit
January 23, 2026
Foreign Policy
Benin’s Failed Coup Reveals Deepening Fault Lines in Africa
December 18, 2025

Bringing global history to life for audiences worldwide

Howard French is an in-demand speaker at universities, cultural institutions, think tanks, and corporate forums. Drawing on his works of history and nonfiction, and on decades of firsthand reporting across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, he offers audiences rare insight into the forces shaping our world.

Africa's place in world history and the future of the continent
China's global expansion and its consequences
Race, identity, and the African diaspora
The ethics and practice of foreign correspondence
"French illuminates a period of time when people believed that standards of justice and equality could prevail for African people on the continent and in the diaspora."
— Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize winner