Howard W. French is the co-author, with Qiu Xiaolong, of Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, and is completing a book about China's relationship with Africa. More
Howard W. French is an associate professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is a former senior writer and correspondent for The New York Times, where he was bureau chief in Shanghai, Tokyo, Abidjan (West and Central Africa), and for Central America and the Caribbean. Since leaving the Times in August 2008 his writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The International Herald Tribune, and many other publications.
He is the author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, and is currently working on a book about China and Africa (Knopf). Howard French is also a documentary photographer, with a recently-published book titled Disappearing Shanghai. Howard's photography and other work can be seen on his blog.
At 82, the famed biologist E. O. Wilson arrived in Mozambique last summer with a modest agenda—save a ravaged park; identify its many undiscovered species; create a virtual textbook that will revolutionize the teaching of biology. Wilson’s newest theory is more ambitious still. It could transform our understanding of human nature—and provide hope for our stewardship of the planet.
All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways built,ports deepened, commercial contracts signed—all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China, whose appetite for commodities seems insatiable. Do China’s grand designs promise the transformation,at last, of a star-crossed continent? Or merely its exploitation? The author travels deep into the heart of Africa, searching for answers.
