000 03487cam a2200397 i 4500
001 on1390820975
003 OCoLC
005 20240115152605.0
008 230720t20232023nyuaf b 001 0beng d
019 _a1260190669
_a1352489200
_a1390798948
020 _a1635574730
_q(hardcover)
020 _a9781635574739
_q(hardcover)
035 _a(OCoLC)1390820975
_z(OCoLC)1260190669
_z(OCoLC)1352489200
_z(OCoLC)1390798948
040 _aJCX
_beng
_erda
_cJCX
_dHQD
_dYDX
_dBDX
_dJAS
_dJED
_dIH9
_dIMT
_dUOK
_dMiTN
043 _af-gh---
050 4 _aHV6699 .G5
_bY44 2023
082 0 4 _a364.16/3
_223/eng/20230731
092 _a364.163 B6142Y 2023
100 1 _aYeebo, Yepoka
245 1 0 _aAnansi's gold :
_bthe man who looted the west, outfoxed Washington, and swindled the world /
_cYepoka Yeebo.
264 1 _aNew York :
_bBloomsbury Publishing,
_c2023.
264 4 _c©2023
300 _axiii, 378 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates :
_billustrations (some color) ;
_c24 cm
336 _astill image
_bsti
_2rdacontent
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _aunmediated
_bn
_2rdamedia
338 _avolume
_bnc
_2rdacarrier
504 _aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 307-310, 313-354) and index.
505 0 _aOur man -- Kerosene boy -- Legends and lies -- One big cocktail party -- Crooks and heroes -- Three hotels -- The crew -- The longest con -- Girard Bank -- Multi, multi, multi -- Hubris -- Silk -- President Blay-Miezah -- House of cards -- Deal with the devil -- Our man in London -- Glory and folly -- Showboys all the way -- Fool's gold -- American grifter -- Soon parted -- The throne and the chain -- The ultimate con man -- Anansi's last tale -- Epilogue: The rest is history.
520 _a"When Ghana won its independence from Britain in 1957, it instantly became a target for home-grown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to snatch any assets that colonialism hadn't already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the new nation's inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the country's gold overseas. Into this big lie stepped one of history's most charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty in Ghana and trained in the United States, John Ackah Blay-Miezah declared himself custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions. You, too, could claim a piece--if only you would "invest" in Blay-Miezah's fictitious efforts to release the equally fictitious fund. Over the 1970s and '80s, he and his accomplices--including Ghanaian state officials and Nixon's former attorney general--scammed hundreds of millions of dollars out of thousands of believers. Blay-Miezah lived in luxury, deceiving Philadelphia lawyers, London financiers, and Seoul businessmen alike, all while eluding his FBI pursuers. American prosecutors called his scam 'one of the most fascinating--and lucrative--in modern history.' In Anansi's Gold, Yepoka Yeebo chases Blay-Miezah's ever-wilder trail and discovers, at long last, what really happened to Ghana's missing wealth. She unfolds a riveting account of Cold War entanglements, international finance, and postcolonial betrayal, revealing how what we call "history" writes itself into being, one lie at a time"--
_cProvided by publisher.
600 1 0 _aBlay-Miezah, John Ackah,
_d1941-1992
650 0 _aFraud
650 0 _aSwindlers and swindling
651 0 _aGhana
655 7 _aBiographies
_2lcgft
999 _c524065
_d524065