Yepoka Yeebo

Yepoka Yeebo's Anansi's Gold is fascinating, thrilling, and well-told. It is as entertaining as it is informative.

I enjoy stories about fraudsters and swindlers. I had read news articles or passing information about the case of Ghana's "missing" gold, but I knew little about it. In summary, John Blay-Miezah was a bright Ghanaian who studied overseas and bounced around a bit before he came up with a wild scam: upon his death President Nkrumah had put Blay-Miezah in charge of trust fund worth billions of dollars. Blay-Miezah worked his way through London, Philadelphia, Conkary, Geneva, New York, Accra, and Seoul getting people to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to help him get the trust fund released. Along the way, Blay-Miezah works must peddle around coups, expulsions, and diplomatic entanglements.

Most of Yeebo's research seems to have been good, gumshoe detective work. She did the hard work of getting first-hand interviews and pulling out wonderful primary sources.

Although she picked a wonderful subject, Yeebo's storytelling is brilliant. She gets through some difficult historical truths while keeping the narrative rolling. The book is fun and easy to read. It is a book that will be enjoyed by laypeople like me, aspiring journalists, historians, and any reader looking for a great, well-told story.… (more)