Howard W. French wrote from Africa for The Washington Post and The New York Times. At the Times, he was bureau chief in Latin America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan, and China. He is the recipient of two Overseas Press Club awards and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee. The author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa and co-author of Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life, he has written for The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and Rolling Stone, among other national publications. He is on the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in New York.