While David French was at university in California, his father was posted to Ethiopia by the World Bank. In 1960, David turned a family visit to Addis Ababa into a round-the-world trip, visiting a dozen countries. He was to spend more than 30 of the next 45 years living, working, and touring in almost 60 countries outside America. Coming to rest in Vermont in 2006, he kept his passport current, visiting countries from New Zealand to the United Kingdom, as well as the breadth of Canada and most parts of the United States.
Much of David's time abroad involved work as a development socioeconomist, a hybrid profession in line with the hybrid degree (a Ph.D. in Political Economy) he had received from Harvard University. Along the way, he worked for institutions including the U.N. World Food Program, the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the consulting firm Arthur D. Little, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the Beijer Institute, the World Resources Institute, the International Fund for Agriculture and Development, and more.
It led him to interesting places at interesting times. He lived in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Angola during civil wars in those countries. He was in Pakistan when extremists placed a bounty on the heads of Americans. He was thrown out of Eritrea by a government that didn't want him looking too closely at its use of his agency's resources. He was one of the last people to see the towering statues of Ramses II in their original place on the banks of the Nile at Abu Simbel. He trekked in the foothills of the Himalayas.
The best of his stories are included in this book.
Author Biography:
David French was born in New Haven, Connecticut on May 27, 1940. He grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. He attended Swarthmore College, Stanford University (B.A.) and Harvard University (M.P.A., Ph.D.). David taught for a year at Lincoln University, PA (economics, including African economics) and later for four years at Johnson State College, VT (economics, including Vermont economics). Most of his career, though, was spent with development and humanitarian aid organizations, including the U.N. World Food Program, the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the consulting firm Arthur D. Little, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the Beijer Institute, the World Resources Institute, the International Fund for Agriculture and Development, and more. He served mostly in posts having to do with renewable energy and natural resources management. David published two books (Working Communally, Basic Books, and Everything is Bad for You, Sourcebooks) as well as articles in The New York Times Magazine, Commonweal, World Development, Public Policy, Natural Resources Forum, Africa Report, and other publications. David has two children and three grandchildren in Dublin, Ireland. He lives with his partner in Vermont.
