Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

Summary: 

Journalist, professor, and author Howard French will discuss his recently released book, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War.

Bio: 

Howard W. French is a career foreign correspondent and global affairs writer and the author of five 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. He worked as a French-English translator and taught English literature in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in the early 1980s, His career in journalism began as a freelance reporter for The Washington Post and other publications in West Africa. He joined The New York Times in 1986, and worked as a metropolitan reporter with the newspaper for three years, and then from 1990 to 2008 reported overseas for The Times as bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. During this time, he was twice the recipient of an Overseas Press Club Award, and his work has received numerous other awards. From 2005 to 2008, alongside his correspondence for The Times, French was a weekly columnist on global affairs for the International Herald Tribune. 

French was a 2011-12 fellow of the Open Society Foundations. Other awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and since leaving The New York Times, he has also written occasional articles that newspaper, as well as for Atlantic magazine, Guardian Longreads, The Wall Street Journal (book reviews), The Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, and other publications. He is also a member of the board of the Columbia Journalism Review, and a professor at the Columbia Journalism School. His most recent non-fiction book, titled "Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War," was published by Norton/Liveright in October 2021.