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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.
₵55.00 -
My Time My Nation: The Autobiography of Prof. George Benneh
Professor Benneh’s life story reflects the promise of the country he serves so faithfully. It captures the anticipation of the pre-independence years, the disillusionment of the forays into military rule, and the integrity of the return to civilian rule with many painful lessons learnt. Indeed, as he recalls his early years with his father on the campaign trail, he presents the mixture of excitement, superstition, and euphoria as the Gold Coast transitions into an independent country ad later the Republic of Ghana.
The author narrates his years of preparation with an impressive roll of mentors and acquaintances—Mr. Gbeho, Professor Steele, Professor Manshard. K.A. Busia, J.B. Danquah, Krobo Edusei, K.A. Gbedemah, Otumfuor Osei Tutu II, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Through out the autobiography the reader is conscious that the astute politician is also an astute scholar—lecturer, researcher, administrator. As he brings his analytical acumen to his performance of his responsibilities as Head of Department, Pro Vice-Chancellor and, finally, Vice Chancellor, Professor Benneh demonstrates a unique ability to move seamlessly between two worlds often considered incompatible.
The autobiography provides a vivid account of an enviable range of experiences from the author’s childhood in Brong-Ahafo region, through conferences in some of the most exotic locations in the world. Yet, he always remains the family man, devoted to his covenant wife, children, grandchildren, wider family and the abiding reliance and trust in his Maker. The autobiography ends with the octogenarian’s tribute to his late father who was his first and best mentor and inspired him reach beyond the sky.
Professor Benneh presents a career that few can equal and recounts his successes as well as his shortcomings with candour and great courage.
The history of a great nation is presented by an insider — that could be enough incentive to read this book. Always more than a historical account, the reader sees the life of a great man who continues, even in adversity, to write a story that will inspire people of all ages, political ties and religious faiths.
₵65.00 -
Ghana: Nkrumah to Rawlings, Kufuor & Beyond – A Historical Sketch of Some Major Political Events in Ghana from 1949-2004 (Volume One, Part 1 1949-1960)
Ghana: Nkrumah to Rawlings, Kufuor & Beyond – A Historical Sketch of Some Major Political Events in Ghana from 1949-2004
₵65.00 -
From Achinakrom to Pro-Vice Chancellor: Autobiography of Florence Abena Dolphyne
An autobiography serves the purpose of relating experiences of the writer. These are usually personal experiences and readers can draw inspiration from such experiences.
This is a book written by a renowned academician, but unlike many books written by academics, it reads like a story written by an accomplished novelist. It tells the story of a girl of very humble parentage who was able, by dint of hard work and divine providence, to make it to the very apex of academia. It is a book that tells the story of ‘Mmofraturo’, synonymous with the training of girls to influence their world before the advent of militant feminism. It is a story that gives another peep at the practice of racism in Europe.
But then, it is also the book that confirms the subtle discrimination that women are often subjected to in our education system, even at the highest level.
Moreover, it is a story that teils the history of the practice of education in Ghana over a number of decades. Then, the writer draws us into the age-old issue of family life, foster children, biological children, and the Ghanaian family set up.
From Achinakrom to Pro-Vice Chancellor is a book about friendship and love that tells the story of women, individually and in groups trying to help make others enjoy the life of work and leisure. Furthermore, this book gives a hint that speaking one’s first language can be the source of the survival of an individual in certain critical situations.
This inspiring story is also a personal history of Ghana from pre-independence by someone who has helped to shape Ghana’s education system, women’s rights during the UN Decade for Women, and human rights through Ghana’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is a story of a phenomenal woman who has made Ghana and Achinakrom proud.
₵70.00 – ₵100.00 -
The Trial of J.J. Rawlings: Echoes of the 31st December Revolution (2nd Edition)
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
₵75.00 -
Infinite Roots
“I must tell you my history,” Baba would roar, “the history you learn at school is not better than that which I have to tell you. My history concerns you directly, it is who you are, what you are, and what you’re going to become.”
“…woven in an unbroken thread of prose…in a complex, digressive narrative that is like a set of Chinese boxes (or those Russian Matryoshka dolls), one laid inside another.” — Literary Review
Infinite Roots follows the multi-generational story of a Ghanaian military family, composed through the eyes of a young daughter learning about her history and culture through the many stories of her parents and elders. This autobiographical novel spreads out across the 60s and 80s Ghana as the military family journeys from Wa to Tamale to Accra to Kumasi to Takoradi to Ho and more. As the young girl grows, she also begins to share her own re-tellings as her elders once did.
“…it is an incredible survey of Ghanaian traditions, customs, superstitions and beliefs, as well as social and political history and the emergence of female education.” — Lee Oliver
₵80.00₵100.00Infinite Roots
₵80.00₵100.00 -
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.
₵90.00 -
Unfinished Journey: The Life and Times of VCRAC Crabbe
Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Asantehene, says this about the book:
“The Life of Justice Crabbe has surely not been all rosy. He has suffered painfully from people who envied and misunderstood him. But through it all, he came out better, fearless and incurably optimistic. We learn from some of his painful experiences recounted in this book that misfortune is only a missed-fortune. We should always believe as individuals and as a nation that the best is yet to come! Clearly, part of his secret for aging so gracefully is being content with the lot that life grants him and not to carry any negative emotions in his body.”
₵95.00 -
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.
₵100.00 -
Hilla Limann: Scholar, Diplomat, Statesman – A Biography
Prof Ivan Addae-Mensah’s biography of Dr. Hilla Limann is a masterpiece. It comprehensively fills a gap in a period of our history that not much has been written on. For those scholars, students, politicians, researchers, interested in the governance, political history, economic development and international relations of Ghana, this is a must read. — His Excellency D.K. Osei (Former Ghana Ambassador to Denmark and the Scandinavian Countries, Former Secretary to Ex- President J.A. Kufuor and Diplomat in Residence, Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy)
The greatest value of this biography lies in the fact that this is a contribution by a person who was first and foremost a friend, and also worked closely with him before, during and after his presidency. Addae-Mensah’s Hilla Limann validates the ancestral saying that: “life is lived but understood backwards.” It contributes toward finding leadership and governance in Africa. To be African is to derive pain from this biography. It shocks and traumatizes. Who are we? Was independence worth it? What was the struggle about and for? Reading this biography shows the urgent need for an energizing vision to get rid of the demons of despair and redeem the worth of Africa for Africans. — Nana Kobina Nketsia V (Senior Lecturer in History, University of Cape Coast and Omanhen of Essikado Traditional Area)
We should honour those who have laboured hard for Ghana and not for self. It is no use preaching against corruption when those who are not corrupt have nothing but penury to show when they leave office. The example of Dr Limann would be of no avail unless it strengthens our will to establish an appropriate pension for retired presidents. — Ambassador K.B. Asante (Public Servant, Diplomat, Educationist, Politician)
₵100.00 -
Recalling a Life of Service: An Autobiography
Not many people are aware of the academic and administrative activities that go on in making high institutions such as universities work. Lucidly narrated in this valuable book is a true account of how Joseph Atsu Ayee, from humble beginnings in Keta, in the Volta region of Ghana, rose through the University of Ghana as Lecturer and climbed up the academic ladder as Professor, the Head of the Department of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies of the University of Ghana, to the high posts of Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa and Rector, MountCrest University College, Accra, Ghana. His hard work and perseverance in spite of the odds enabled him to climb up the administrative ladder very fast. His personal account is illuminating and inspiring. This valuable book contains insights into academia – a closed community, which is often shuttered from public view.
University administrators, policy makers, researchers and the curious general reader would find this riveting autobiography very illuminating and invaluable.
₵100.00 -
Dark Days in Ghana
Kwame Nkrumah, foremost exponent of African unity and socialism, never saw Ghana in isolation from the rest of Africa or from the world revolutionary struggle.
In Dark Days in Ghana, he exposed the true nature of the military-police dictatorship that was established after the overthrow of Ghana’s Constitutional Government on 24th February 1966, setting the event in the context of the wider continental and world situation.
Dark Days in Ghana demolishes the “big lie” that Ghana had needed to be rescued from “economic chaos”. Nkrumah recounts the systematic sell-out of Ghana’s assets to neo-colonialist interests by the military-police junta, and the subsequent reduction of Ghana from democratic statehood to the humiliating position of neo-colony.
Since this book was first published, Ghana has had several governments − military and civilian. None have succeeded in restoring Ghana to the position it occupied in Africa and the world during Nkrumah’s stewardship.
This and other works of Nkrumah demonstrate the accuracy of Nkrumah’s political and philosophical vision, and the clarity of his understanding of the problems and possibilities for all those resisting oppression and exploitation throughout the world, and for the continuing development of continental African unity.
₵120.00Dark Days in Ghana
₵120.00 -
Daughter in Exile: A Novel
The acclaimed author of The Teller of Secrets returns with a gut-wrenching, yet heartwarming, story about a young Ghanaian woman’s struggle to make a life in the US, and the challenges she must overcome.
Lola is twenty-one, and her life in Senegal couldn’t be better. An aspiring writer and university graduate, she has a great job, a nice apartment, a vibrant social life, and a future filled with possibility. But fate disrupts her world when she falls for Armand, an American Marine stationed at the U.S. Embassy. Her mother, a high court judge in Ghana, disapproves of her choice, but nothing will stop Lola from boarding a plane for Armand and America.
That fateful flight is only the beginning of an extraordinary journey; she has traded her carefree existence in Senegal for the perilous position of an undocumented immigrant in 1990s America.
Lola encounters adversity that would crush a less-determined woman. Her fate hangs on whether or not she’ll grow in courage to forge a different life from one she’d imagined, whether she’ll succeed in putting herself and family together again. Daughter in Exile is a hope-filled story about mother love, resilience, and unyielding strength.
₵120.00Daughter in Exile: A Novel
₵120.00 -
To the Thirsty Land: Autobiography of a Patriot by Emmanuel Evans-Anfom
Emmanuel Evans-Anfom, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 101 years, was considered a living legend in Ghana.
He was one of the great pioneers of the medical profession in that country, as well as serving as Vice Chancellor for The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. His memoirs span his lifetime from the end of colonial rule through four and a half decades of independent Ghana. They tell the story of his early upbringing in James Town, the seminal impact of Achimota College on his education and career, and his medical training at Edinburgh University in wartime Britain. At the peak of his professional career, Evans-Anfom was one of the leading surgeons of the country and a renowned educationalist.
₵130.00 – ₵180.00To the Thirsty Land: Autobiography of a Patriot by Emmanuel Evans-Anfom
₵130.00 – ₵180.00 -
Beyond Fear and Power: Osahene Boakye Djan – Pioneer Journey from the Village to the City and Back
On 2nd June, 1979, the military high command of the Ghana Armed Forces picked up intelligence of an impending coup against their regime from the 5 Battalion, the only fighting unit in Accra at the time.
General Odartey Wellington, the then Army Commander, informed his lower commanders to take steps to order Captain Boakye Djan, the D Company Commander of the 5 Battalion of Infantry to stop it.
On 4th June, 1979, Captain Boakye Djan emerged to become the substantive head of government and official spokesperson of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council of Ghana.
This is the story of one of Africa’s great military masterminds and why he has survived it all.
₵150.00