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Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide
by Howard W. French
The Second Emancipation, a work of Odyssean dimension, recasts the liberation of post–World War II colonial Africa and the American civil rights struggle through the lens of Ghana's revolutionary visionary Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), who emerges as the most significant African leader of the twentieth century.
Determined that readers fully understand Nkrumah's legacy, bestselling author of Born in Blackness Howard W. French newly dramatizes the Nkrumah story―his humble beginnings, his momentous experience in Harlem, his American education, and his return to Ghana in the final years of British subjugation. The language soars as French evokes an entire continent in the throes of liberation and a roiling United States in the Cold War era. In its dramatic depiction of a continent that once exuded the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation is a generational work that positions not only Africa but also the American civil rights movement at the forefront of modern-day history.
"In this magisterial account, journalist French (Born in Blackness) revisits the history of the Pan-Africanist movement through the life of Ghanaian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah...Weaving a staggering amount of history into a propulsive narrative that recasts the 20th century as a long struggle for liberation, this is a towering achievement." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A fluent exploration of an important if often overlooked political leader whose ideas still bear consideration." —Kirkus Reviews
"French adeptly places the rise and fall of Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana, the first liberated African colony, in the context of wider anti-colonial movements in Asia and the Middle East, as well as Nkrumah's influence on racial justice in the U.S…Despite assassination threats, ethnic rivalries, and failure to achieve his greatest goal of a pan African Federation, Nkrumah's influence on African and African American liberation remains unparalleled." —Booklist
This information about The Second Emancipation was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City.
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