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Big Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana: Power, Ideology and the Burden of History, 1982-1994
During the 1980s, Ghanaian politics went through remarkable transformations – from revolution, through adoption of a draconian economic reform programme, to the eventual return to democratic government in 1992. This study covers the entire sequence of events, situating them in the broader historical context and offering a sustained explanation of what occurred. Since the eighteenth century, a central theme dominating Ghanaian politics and society has been the relationship between wealth and virtue, and Dr Nugent offers a key explanation of the way in which this theme is still predominant today.
Drawing on research which focuses on different sectors of the body politic – the labour movement, the peasantry, professional associations, the student movement, the churches and the military – this book provides a much-needed synthesis. Dr Nugent gives an in-depth analysis of the 1992 elections, including information based on personal fieldwork and interviews undertaken in the Volta Region. His analysis is situated within the wider context of Africanist historical and political research, while doing justice to the nuances and complexities of Ghanaian political life.
₵40.00Quick ViewBig Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana: Power, Ideology and the Burden of History, 1982-1994
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Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics and Revolution
Recognized as one of Time Magazine’s ‘icons of the 20th century, Che Guevara became a legend in his own time and now has re-emerged as a symbol of a new generation of political activists. Far more than a guerrilla strategist, Che Guevara made a profound and lasting contribution to revolutionary theory and Marxist humanism as demonstrated in this best selling Reader.
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Guns Over Kigali: The Rwandese Civil War -1994 (A personal account)
Guns Over Kigali is a personal account of the events leading up to the Rwanda genocide in 1994 through the eyes of Ghanaian UN peacekeeping soldier who served as the UNAMIR Deputy Force Commander and Ghana Contingent Commander.
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Interim Republic: Ghana – The 1st Military Junta (1966 – 1969)
When the long years of plotting by foreign powers with Ghanaian collaborators to upset governance in Ghana finally succeeded, many justification books and laudatory pamphlets and newspaper articles were published at home and abroad. Some bore pseudonames, others came forceful. The event which occasioned the potpourri was the 1st military coup d’etat in Ghana staged by a military and police combine.
The Military/Police combination which overtook the government of Ghana, the 1st Republic Convention People’s Party (CPP)-led government in that putsch, installed an administration which came to be known as the National Liberation Council (NLC).
This book sheds much-needed light on their lives and times.
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Leaders: Myth and Reality
An instant bestseller!
Stanley McChrystal, the retired US Army general and bestselling author of Team of Teams, profiles thirteen of history’s great leaders, including Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, and Robert E. Lee, to show that leadership is not what you think it is—and never was.
Stan McChrystal served for thirty-four years in the US Army, rising from a second lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division to a four-star general, in command of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. During those years he worked with countless leaders and pondered an ancient question: “What makes a leader great?” He came to realize that there is no simple answer.
McChrystal profiles thirteen famous leaders from a wide range of eras and fields—from corporate CEOs to politicians and revolutionaries. He uses their stories to explore how leadership works in practice and to challenge the myths that complicate our thinking about this critical topic.
With Plutarch’s Lives as his model, McChrystal looks at paired sets of leaders who followed unconventional paths to success. For instance:
– Walt Disney and Coco Chanel built empires in very different ways. Both had public personas that sharply contrasted with how they lived in private.
– Maximilien Robespierre helped shape the French Revolution in the eighteenth century; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi led the jihadist insurgency in Iraq in the twenty-first. We can draw surprising lessons from them about motivation and persuasion.
– Both Boss Tweed in nineteenth-century New York and Margaret Thatcher in twentieth-century Britain followed unlikely roads to the top of powerful institutions.
– Martin Luther and his future namesake Martin Luther King Jr., both local clergymen, emerged from modest backgrounds to lead world-changing movements.
Finally, McChrystal explores how his former hero, General Robert E. Lee, could seemingly do everything right in his military career and yet lead the Confederate Army to a devastating defeat in the service of an immoral cause.Leaders will help you take stock of your own leadership, whether you’re part of a small team or responsible for an entire nation.
₵80.00Quick ViewLeaders: Myth and Reality
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Lincoln
The year’s most important biography — of a leader who still speaks to our times
In the bestselling tradition of Truman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Herbert Donald offers a new classic in American history and biography — a masterly account of how one man’s extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality.
Culminating his half-century of study of Lincoln and his times, Donald brilliantly traces Lincoln’s rise from humble origins to the pinnacle of the presidency. He reveals the development of the future President’s character and shows how Lincoln’s enormous capacity for growth enabled one of the least experienced men ever elected to high office to become a giant in the annals of American politics. And he depicts a man who was basically passive by nature, yet ambitious enough to take enormous risks and overcome repeated defeats.
Much more than a political biography, Lincoln seats us behind the desk of a President who, was both a master of ambiguity and expediency and a great moral leader, as he makes the decisions that preserved the Union and shaped modern America.
₵100.00Quick ViewLincoln
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Mein Kampf
Madman, tyrant, animal – history has given Adolf Hitler many names. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), often called the Nazi bible, Hitler describes his life, frustrations, ideals, and dreams.
Born to an impoverished couple in a small town in Austria, the young Adolf grew up with the fervent desire to become a painter. The death of his parents and outright rejection from art schools in Vienna forced him into underpaid work as a labourer. During the First World War, Hitler served in the infantry and was decorated for bravery. After the war, he became actively involved with socialist political groups and quickly rose to power, establishing himself as Chairman of the National Socialist German Worker’s party.
In 1924, Hitler led a coalition of nationalist groups in a bid to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. The infamous Munich “Beer-hall putsch” was unsuccessful, and Hitler was arrested. During the nine months he was in prison, an embittered and frustrated Hitler dictated a personal manifesto to his loyal follower Rudolph Hess. He vented his sentiments against communism and the Jewish people in this document, which was to become Mein Kampf, the controversial book that is seen as the blue-print for Hitler’s political and military campaign.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes his strategy for rebuilding Germany and conquering Europe. It is a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust.
“…I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.”
₵50.00Quick ViewMein Kampf
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My Command: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970)
First published a decade after the end of the Nigerian Civil War, My Command takes a keen look at the events leading up to – and shortly following – the war, as well as the war itself.
Starting with a study of Nigeria’s political landscape in the years following independence, this book chronicles the life of a nation whose hope for the future gives way to the tension, distrust and suspicion that results in violence and the subsequent outbreak of war. My Command gives a detailed and vivid account of military operations on all fronts, as well as the response of the international community and the impact of the war on individual lives.
Olusegun Obasanjo, in this memoir, tells of this delicate time in the life of Nigeria with honesty and humanity. This book is as relevant now as it was decades ago – one man’s record of our past and a guide for our nation’s present and future leaders and citizens.
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Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th (Fireman Series) – Hardback
Kwesi Yankah is currently the Minister of State for Tertiary Education in Ghana. Until April 2017, he was Vice Chancellor of Central University, Ghana, and was previously Professor of Linguistics and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Ghana. Yankah, an inimitable satirist, is a proud product of Winneba Secondary School, University of Ghana and Indiana University, USA, where he did his doctorate. Well known in literary and academic circles, Professor Yankah has been a Public Intellectual since the late 1970s when, at 27, he started an anonymous column in The Catholic Standard newspaper, under the pseudonym Abonsam Fireman. The credit for the column, in a suppressive political environment, was often mistakenly given to the two great luminaries PAV Ansah and Adu Boahen.
Later in 1986, when Yankah returned from doctoral work at Indiana University, he introduced another weekly column, Woes of the Kwatriot, this time in The Mirror which he sustained for a period of ten years. In 1996, the Ghana Journalists Association honoured him for ‘the longest running column in the history of Ghanaian journalism.’ His writings, both literary and academic, have won for Yankah various awards including the WEB Du Bois Award (GAW), the Zora Hurston Award (GAW), the Ghana Book Development Award (GBDC) and the Gold Book Award given by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The present volume represents landmarks within 22 months of Yankah’s weekly column in The Catholic Standard, from January 1979 to March 1980. It is inspired by topical issues in two military regimes (General F Akuffo’s SMC 2, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution) and one civilian government (Hilla Limann’s PNP). This compilation altogether allows a veiled peep into the most turbulent period in Ghana’s political history, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution, including preceding events and the aftermath of the Revolution. In the words of Dr Anthony Bonnah Koomson, Editor of The Catholic Standard at the time of Yankah’s celebrated column: “The book captures a momentous era in Ghana’s immediate political history, reminiscences of which the author has sough to recreate and preserve with phenomenal linguistic skill. It presents, through satire, an accurate heartbeat of a people under intense political paralysis.”
This book makes compelling, even if hilarious, reading on Ghana’s enigmatic June 4th Revolution.
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Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th (Fireman Series) – Paperback
Kwesi Yankah is currently the Minister of State for Tertiary Education in Ghana. Until April 2017, he was Vice Chancellor of Central University, Ghana, and was previously Professor of Linguistics and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Ghana. Yankah, an inimitable satirist, is a proud product of Winneba Secondary School, University of Ghana and Indiana University, USA, where he did his doctorate. Well known in literary and academic circles, Professor Yankah has been a Public Intellectual since the late 1970s when, at 27, he started an anonymous column in The Catholic Standard newspaper, under the pseudonym Abonsam Fireman. The credit for the column, in a suppressive political environment, was often mistakenly given to the two great luminaries PAV Ansah and Adu Boahen.
Later in 1986, when Yankah returned from doctoral work at Indiana University, he introduced another weekly column, Woes of the Kwatriot, this time in The Mirror which he sustained for a period of ten years. In 1996, the Ghana Journalists Association honoured him for ‘the longest running column in the history of Ghanaian journalism.’ His writings, both literary and academic, have won for Yankah various awards including the WEB Du Bois Award (GAW), the Zora Hurston Award (GAW), the Ghana Book Development Award (GBDC) and the Gold Book Award given by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The present volume represents landmarks within 22 months of Yankah’s weekly column in The Catholic Standard, from January 1979 to March 1980. It is inspired by topical issues in two military regimes (General F Akuffo’s SMC 2, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution) and one civilian government (Hilla Limann’s PNP). This compilation altogether allows a veiled peep into the most turbulent period in Ghana’s political history, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution, including preceding events and the aftermath of the Revolution. In the words of Dr Anthony Bonnah Koomson, Editor of The Catholic Standard at the time of Yankah’s celebrated column: “The book captures a momentous era in Ghana’s immediate political history, reminiscences of which the author has sough to recreate and preserve with phenomenal linguistic skill. It presents, through satire, an accurate heartbeat of a people under intense political paralysis.”
This book makes compelling, even if hilarious, reading on Ghana’s enigmatic June 4th Revolution.
₵90.00Quick View -
The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt
Regarded as one of the greatest Presidents of The United States, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) led a full and vibrant life that reflected his storied personality and presence. ‘The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt’ is an invaluable literary work and a true gift to readers, as it is a glimpse into the psyche of such an enigmatic historical figure. Roosevelt led a life rich in accomplishments not limited to his being the youngest president in US history. He was a courageous soldier, posthumously receiving the Medal of Honor for his creation and leadership of the Rough Riders in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. He was also the first American to win a Nobel Peace prize, which he received for his negotiation of the end of the Russo-Japanese War. In addition, Roosevelt was an adventurer with a taste for hunting and exploring, especially in South America, where a river is named after him. His iconic slogan, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” is still quoted and embodied by politicians to this very day, exemplifying his indelible impact on the history of the United States.
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The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today
An epic history of the decline of American military leadership—from the #1 bestselling author of Fiasco
While history has been kind to the American generals of World War II—Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley—it has been less kind to the generals of the wars that followed, such as Koster, Franks, Sanchez, and Petraeus. In The Generals, Thomas E. Ricks sets out to explain why that is. In chronicling the widening gulf between performance and accountability among the top brass of the U.S. military, Ricks tells the stories of great leaders and suspect ones, generals who rose to the occasion and generals who failed themselves and their soldiers. In Ricks’s hands, this story resounds with larger meaning: about the transmission of values, about strategic thinking, and about the difference between an organization that learns and one that fails.
₵60.00Quick View
