French is always a must-read, but this book sets a new standard even for him, tracing the arc of Pan-Africanism and its reverberations across the world in a riveting fashion. While Kwame Nkrumah is at the center of this history, it is by no means a biography. Instead, French uses Nkrumah's trajectory to chart various movements in Africa, the US, Europe, and the Soviet Union and how they intersected with the African independence and Pan-African movements. It's genuinely eye-opening how connected the US and Ghana were during this period. I'd known that W.E.B. DuBois died there, but learning about Nkrumah's education in the US and the interactions and influence over the decades with people who would later become leaders of the civil rights movement was incredible. It was all the more depressing to read about the creeping impossibility of charting a successful non-aligned middle way for Ghana and African nations more broadly, but this history is a shining example of the power of international solidarity in driving social change. Highly recommend