Philip D. Curtin (1922–2009) was author of The Image of Africa and Two Jamaicas. He edited Africa Remembered, a collection of narratives by former slaves and others involved in the slave trade. He was a member of the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin from 1956–1975. From 1975 until the time of his death, he was a member of the faculty of Johns Hopkins University.

“Efforts to explain the nature of Africans and their culture led eventually to discussion of race, of origins, of languages, of climate, of Islam, and of biblical interpretations of man’s creation. . . . Scholars will find this monumental study most useful not only for assumptions about Africans and their history, but also for the light cast on such social sciences as anthropology and ethnology, for theories of tropical medicine, and also for its vast bibliographical information.” —Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences"For the light it sheds on . . . the new Africa as well as the old, [this work] should be read by everyone concerned with the continent's affairs."—Africa Report