Description:
Finalist for the 2026 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Longlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize
Longlisted for the 2026 Plutarch Award (Biographers International Organization)
Publishers Weekly - Best Books of 2025 [Nonfiction]
Foreign Policy - Most Anticipated Books of 2025
"Howard French's The Second Emancipation stands the second half of the last century on its geopolitical head." --David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
From the acclaimed author of Born in Blackness comes an extraordinary account of Africa's liberation from colonial oppression, a work that fundamentally reshapes our understanding of modern history.
Brief description: Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness and The Second Emancipation, French lives in New York City.
Review Quotes: It would be as impossible to overstate the importance of Nkrumah as it would be to overstate the brilliance of this study. For too many, Africa as a whole remains an enigma. Howard W. French's masterwork clarifies the continent, both its history and the backstory to its current conflicts, with remarkable precision.--Greg Grandin, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The End of the Myth