Kwame Nkrumah

Jeffrey S. Ahlman is an associate professor of history and director of African studies at Smith College. He is the author of Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2017) and coeditor of the journal Ghana Studies.

"This short biography of Kwame Nkrumah highlights the multiple worlds that informed the Ghanaian leader's entry onto the global stage. Ahlman offers an accessible and nuanced narrative about the personal, ideological, and intellectual cornerstones of Nkrumah's vision for Ghana and the African continent, with perceptive attention to Nkrumah's afterlife in scholarly and popular understandings of his memory and legacy." "An excellent assessment of Nkrumah and his historical life and political project." (Journal of Modern African Studies) "Jeffrey S. Ahlman's [book] describes Kwame Nkrumah as a man—and a mind—in motion. Placing Nkrumah's evolution into the context of the political shifts and ideological debates of the twentieth century, Ahlman steadily fleshes out the question of who Nkrumah was and why his name continues to ring throughout the African continent and beyond. Along the way he traces Nkrumah's influences across continents and oceans, capturing the glory and pathos of this most-storied icon." "Jeffrey Ahlman takes us through the diverse stages of Kwame Nkrumah's life, navigating his personal experiences via the specific global contexts that marked each era. Turn-of-the-century colonial infiltration into the African continent; global depression and war; antiracism and anticolonial resistance in the United States and Britain; and postcolonial pan-Africanism form a concrete stage for the imagination of one man from Nkroful. This is at once the story of Nkrumah's vision for Africa and for Ghana and of Ghana's ever-evolving rendering of Nkrumah." "Even for the student of Ghanaian history and politics, Kwame Nkrumah is an enigmatic figure at once lionized as a hero of African liberation and pan-Africanism, and dismissed as an authoritarian strongman. Drawing on his extensive work on early postcolonial Ghana, Jeffrey Ahlman presents a fresh and compelling portrait of Nkrumah, highlighting his unlikely rise to political leadership, capturing the scale of his ambitions, and documenting the internal contradictions of his political project." "Ahlman's biography sheds new light on the former Ghanaian president as well as the shifting politics of liberation in Ghana, Africa, and the African diaspora. Conversations about Nkrumah and his afterlives will assuredly continue: this book will enliven and enrich them for years to come."