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

Pulitzer Prize finalist Howard W. French presents a sweeping narrative that traverses 600 years. The economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in America, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “darkest” continent.

Born in Blackness dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures whose stories have been erased over centuries: unimaginably rich medieval African emperors who traded with Asia; Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers; ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage.

“…searing, humbling and essential reading…”—The New York Times

Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and former New York Times bureau chief in the Caribbean and Central America, West and Central Africa, Tokyo, and Shanghai.