Books & Writing

The Second Emancipation

Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide

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 when millions across Africa and the diaspora believed a new world was within reach. French reveals how Nkrumah forged a global movement demanding equality, sovereignty, and dignity for Black people everywhere, and why its ultimate defeat continues to shape our world today.

— Liveright

“A magisterial account… a towering achievement.”

Publishers Weekly, starred review

★ Named one of the 20 best non-fiction books of 2025 by Publishers Weekly

Born in Blackness

Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

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 by curiosity about Asia but by the pursuit of African gold and labor, and that the transatlantic slave trade was the hidden engine of Western capitalism. Drawing on five centuries of history, he restores Africa and its people to their rightful place in the human story.

— Liveright

★ A Best Book of the Year — Foreign Affairs & Financial Times · Winner, MAAH Stone Book Prize & Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

Everything Under the Heavens

How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power

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 ancient concept of tianxia — 'everything under the heavens' — continues to animate Beijing's foreign policy today, driving territorial disputes in the South China Sea and a bid for regional dominance that echoes centuries of imperial thinking.

— Alfred A. Knopf

“Fascinating… a deep historical and cultural study of the meaning of China’s rise.”

The New York Times Sunday Book Review

★ Notable Nonfiction — The Guardian

China's Second Continent

How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

An on-the-ground investigation into China's sweeping expansion across Africa, told through the lives of Chinese migrants, African entrepreneurs, and local communities navigating a tectonic shift in global power. French traveled to nine African countries to document an extraordinary human migration — and the complex collision of ambition, exploitation, and opportunity it has produced.

— Alfred A. Knopf

★ Best Books of 2014 — The Economist, The Guardian & Foreign Affairs · New York Times Notable Book

Disappearing Shanghai

Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life

A stunning visual elegy for old Shanghai, captured before the wrecking ball of modernization erased it forever. French's black-and-white photographs document the lilong — the intimate alleyway neighborhoods that defined Shanghai's working-class soul — paired with poems by Qiu Xiaolong that give voice to the residents who called these vanishing streets home. A unique collaboration between two artists who refuse to let a way of life be forgotten.

— Homa & Sekey Books

“Just because it will all be gone soon is no reason for us to forget. Art is so often an attempt to seize something, to preserve a moment that is by definition fleeting and transitory.”

Howard W. French, on the project’s purpose

“French’s photographs indicate intent, thought, order. They provide questioning, demanding from us what all good photographs do, which is to say that they be placed in some relation to the wider practice of photography and to the ethics and possibilities of the form.”

Teju Cole, Known and Strange Things

A Continent for the Taking

The Tragedy and Hope of Africa

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 the ruins of Mobutu's Zaire to the killing fields of Liberia to the quiet dignity of ordinary citizens, French delivers a clear-eyed portrait of a continent betrayed by its leaders and abandoned by the West — yet full of resilience and unrealized promise.

— Alfred A. Knopf

★ Winner, American Library Association Black Caucus Award for Non-Fiction · Winner, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award