• General Acheampong: The Life and Times of Ghana’s Head of State (Hardcover)

    A magnificent book…brilliant in shedding light on some of the most important but little known dark passages in our national history…worth reading by anybody who truly seeks knowledge about our recent past.

  • The Military, My Life: 43 Years – 5 Months – 25 Days: Autobiography

    The Military, My Life: 43 Years – 5 Months – 25 Days: Autobiography is General Frimpong’s fifth book.

    Starting from his primary school days across Ghana, his secondary education and enlistment into the Ghana Armed Forces in 1970, he discusses his long career in the military, community service, diplomatic life, incursions into academia, retirement in 2014 after over forty-three years’ service, and life after retirement.

    He also discusses his sojourns in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Canada and the USA.

    Maj Don-Chebe states in the Foreword:

    “For the officers who have schooled peacefully and smoothly in the Ghana Armed Forces, spare a thought for officers like Brig Gen Dan Frimpong, who blazed the trail and suffered all kinds of indignities to his person and unholy twists in his career path. His numerous runs-in with the Military High Command is a subject that should inform commanders at various levels that, a knowledge-based and future-focused Armed Forces needs a certain kind of officer hungry for knowledge and determined to compete with the best inside and outside.

    “The autobiography of Brig Gen Dan Frimpong should give hope and confidence to young persons, inside and outside the Military to continue to pursue their dreams and aspirations. Any setback can only be temporary; persistence, perseverance, determination and grit should drive you forward.”

  • Bookset: The Trial of J.J. Rawlings & Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th (2 books)

    Two prolific writers, brothers. One tumultuous period in Ghana’s history. One significant personality.
    Same perspectives or different? Get this set and find out.

    About the Trial of JJ Rawlings

    The Trial of JJ Rawlings narrates the extraordinary circumstances under which a young military officer Flt Lt JJ Rawlings, later to become the longest serving Head of State of Ghana, shot into the limelight to change the course of Ghana’s history and political development.The first edition of the book, originally published in 1986, completely sold out within a year, making this second edition very welcome in response to public request.

    This volume is a valuable contribution to our understanding of those ineluctable forces that have changed the contours of our society. Surely, the story of JJ, well told in this volume, cannot fail to grip and hold the reader’s most concentrated attention. – Prof F.A. Botchwey, PhD

     

    About Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th

    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.

     

  • Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now (Hardcover)

    A concise, brilliant, and trenchant examination of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s successful lifelong quest for the presidency by National Book Award winner Evan Osnos.

    President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest—fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses and disappointments that he has suffered.

    Yet even as Biden’s life has been shaped by drama, it has also been powered by a willingness, rare at the top ranks of politics, to confront his shortcomings, errors, and reversals of fortune. As he says, “Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.” His trials have forged in him a deep empathy for others in hardship—an essential quality as he leads America toward recovery and renewal.

    Blending up-close journalism and broader context, Evan Osnos, who won the National Book Award in 2014, draws on nearly a decade of reporting for The New Yorker to capture the characters and meaning of 2020’s extraordinary presidential election. It is based on lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and a range of activists, advisers, opponents, and Biden family members.

    This portrayal illuminates Biden’s long and eventful career in the Senate, his eight years as Obama’s vice president, his sojourn in the political wilderness after being passed over for Hillary Clinton in 2016, his decision to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, and his choice of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.

    Osnos ponders the difficulties Biden faces as his presidency begins and weighs how a changing country, a deep well of experiences, and a rigorous approach to the issues, have altered his positions. In this nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy—a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history.

  • Ahafo and the Bono Regions of Ghana: Accomplishment & Honours of ‘Brilliant Achievers’ (Hardcover)

    This book is a one-of-a-kind compendium of profiles of some distinguished citizens from Ahafo and the Bono Regions of Ghana. The book contains nuggets of inspiring biographical information that brings to the fore some men and women who have dared the oddities of life to challenge the debilitating issues of human existence.

    The book is a guiding light for young people to emulate many successful Ghanaians, some of whom had humble beginnings but braced the odds to emerge as champions in their respective callings.

    In addition, it is a must-read for professionals desiring to excel in their chosen careers and parents who want to inbue their children with a higher sense of confidence, patriotism and hope.

    The first section of the book covers the profile of eminent natives of the Ahafo and the Bono regions who have contributed significantly to the development of the nation in all sectors, including chieftaincy, banking and finance, trade and industry, hospitality, diplomacy and farming, among others.

    The second section talks about non-natives who had over the years also made a tremendous contribution to the regions and the nation while section three is a photographic presentation containing pictures of people such as female educationists, lawyers, ministers of state, regional ministers, sports personalities and some significant activities and events.

    Additionally, the book contains photographs of all the chiefs and queen mothers of the former Brong Ahafo Region before it was carved into three regions.

    It also has a six-page epilogue which contains the authors’ thoughts and also features all ministers of state who hailed from the regions.

  • Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities (African Humanities Series)

    Beyond the Political Spider: Critical Issues in African Humanities by Kwesi Yankah is the first title in the newly established African Humanities Association (AHA) publication series.

    By integrating his own biography into a critique of the global politics of knowledge production, Yankah, through a collection of essays, interrogates critical issues confronting the Humanities that spawn intellectual hegemonies and muffle African voices. Using the example of Ghana, he brings under scrutiny, amongst others, endemic issues of academic freedom, gender inequities, the unequal global academic order, and linguistic imperialism in language policies in governance.

    In the face of these challenges, the author deftly navigates the complex terrain of indigenous knowledge and language in the context of democratic politics, demonstrating that agency can be liberatory when emphasising indigenous knowledge, especially expressed through the idiom of local languages and symbols, including Ananse, the protean spider, folk hero in Ghana and most parts of the pan-African world.

    “Fascinating snapshots from an engaged scholarly life in Africa, valuable as an archival resource for the understanding of this period of higher education in Africa.” – John Higgins, Arderne Chair in Literature, Department of English Literary Studies, University of Cape Town

    “This book is unique and gives a powerful rendition of the state of the Humanities in Africa (with Ghana as a case in point). It grapples with some of the pertinent issues dogging the Humanities in Africa. It comments on the Humanities scholarship in Africa, and subtly throws a challenge for future scholarship. It draws on African traditions, communal heritage, and governance in discussing the role and place of the Humanities in Africa. It also brings into the analysis the ever-changing imperatives and modernity in re-configuring African Humanities.” – Mark Benge Okot, Head of Department, Literature, Makerere University, Uganda

    “Beyond the Political Spider’ effectively draws, in a unique fashion, from literature, history, linguistics and other cognate disciplines in the African Humanities.” – Sati Umaru Fwatshak, Department of History, University of Jos, Nigeria

  • The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s Power Cult (Pre-Order)

    Getting to grips with Russia’s 21st century Tsar.

    Vladimir V. Putin has confounded world leaders and defied their assumptions as they tried to figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. The Putin Mystique takes the reader on a journey through the Russia of Vladimir Putin, named by Forbes magazine in 2013 as the most powerful man in the world. It is a neo-feudal world where iPads, WTO membership, and Brioni business suits conceal a power structure straight out of the Middle Ages, where the Sovereign is perceived as both divine and demonic, where a man’s riches are determined by his proximity to the Kremlin, and where large swathes of the populace live in precarious complacency interrupted by bouts of revolt.

    Where does that kind of power come from? The answer lies not in the leader, but in the people: from the impoverished worker who appeals directly to Putin for aid, to the businessmen, security officers and officials in Putin’s often dysfunctional government who look to their leader for instruction and protection.

    In her writing career, Anna Arutunyan has travelled throughout Russia to report on modern Russian politics. She has interviewed oligarchs and policemen, bishops and politicians, and many ordinary Russians. Her book is a vivid and revealing exploration of the way in which myth, power, and even religion interact to produce the love-hate relationship between the Russian people and Vladimir Putin.

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