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142 reviews for:
Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World
Yepoka Yeebo
3.84 AVERAGE
142 reviews for:
Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World
Yepoka Yeebo
3.84 AVERAGE
Never heard of this guy before! A pretty interesting story, there were times though where I wanted more details on things, and other sections where I wanted less.
informative
medium-paced
This isn't making my top books list, but it's my last of the year and I have never read something so wild.
The scams had scams. Real life truly is stranger than fiction. I got sucked in for the history of Ghana (SO many coups) and the CIA being in mess as per usual, but then the true crime style background into the Oman Ghana Trust Fund kept me tuned in. Blay-Miezah scammed HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars in the wildest ways. He partnered with folks across the world ranging from Black liberation fighters to Nazis sympathizers and murderers to fleece people of so much money in increasingly outlandish ways.
It was far too long for me and the ridiculousness and number of bad actors lost me but it was a ride.
The scams had scams. Real life truly is stranger than fiction. I got sucked in for the history of Ghana (SO many coups) and the CIA being in mess as per usual, but then the true crime style background into the Oman Ghana Trust Fund kept me tuned in. Blay-Miezah scammed HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars in the wildest ways. He partnered with folks across the world ranging from Black liberation fighters to Nazis sympathizers and murderers to fleece people of so much money in increasingly outlandish ways.
It was far too long for me and the ridiculousness and number of bad actors lost me but it was a ride.
Fascinating story but the writing is a but flat and slow.
I went back and forth on this one a lot! I thought it was extraordinarily successful when it linked the con man story to larger themes, like how it fit into the exploitation of Ghana by the British, systematic destruction of documents to obscure the truth, and Ghanaian folklore. I was also so impressed by the sheer volume of sources — the bibliography at the end was fascinated. In the middle, it got bogged down by the sheer magnitude of Blay-Miezah’s scams. High three overall!
adventurous
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
adventurous
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Interesting historical non-fictio as his tactics seem quite similar to modern politicans and scammers.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. It’s mind blowing but at the same time completely believable that people fell for maybe the greatest con man to have ever lived.
Side note, did not realize Shirley Temple would play a part in all of this madness as a pretty darn good ambassador.
Side note, did not realize Shirley Temple would play a part in all of this madness as a pretty darn good ambassador.
adventurous
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
(from my personal reading journal, Mar. 19, 2024)
This was another recommendation from NPR, and it fits pretty handily with the true crime subbrand (white collar and fiscal crime). Anansi's Gold follows the life and swindles of John Ackah Blay-Miezah, a Ghanaian conman who used the tumult of the country's early independence to enrich himself.
Blay, who started out lying about his studies at U of Penn's Wharton School (he did not ever enroll, really), seized on the exile and death of first Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah to start a bogus fund--the Oman Ghana Trust--which he used to secure funds ostensibly for developments in the Western regional and Ghana at large. He promised huge returns on investment, but in reality was using investments to keep up his lavish lifestyle. Many of his lies were relatively easily debunked--Blay was in prison when Nkrumah died and couldn't have been at his deathbed, and Blay struggled to explicate many of the particulars of his fictitious trust fund--but, as Yeebo points out, the scheme targeted primarily greed-driven, information-poor business people from outcultures like the US and UK, so the initial bar was low and the ritual of involvement carried many victims through what should have been a wool-removing stage.
I can't imagine that Blay, known to lie through his teeth to nearly anyone, was an easy research target, but Yeebo did an excellent job of divining the truth under each lie. She also did a great service in pointing out the broader context that Blay existed in, where he'd been swindled by the colonial rule of the Gold Coast and by Western misinterpretations of Africans at the tail end of the 20th century. As Yeebo put it, the people of Ghana also had reason to believe Blay's claims--the country's riches had been drained by the English, and it was logical to think they had to be somewhere; like with Blay, though, they had been taken only to self-enrich.
This was another recommendation from NPR, and it fits pretty handily with the true crime subbrand (white collar and fiscal crime). Anansi's Gold follows the life and swindles of John Ackah Blay-Miezah, a Ghanaian conman who used the tumult of the country's early independence to enrich himself.
Blay, who started out lying about his studies at U of Penn's Wharton School (he did not ever enroll, really), seized on the exile and death of first Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah to start a bogus fund--the Oman Ghana Trust--which he used to secure funds ostensibly for developments in the Western regional and Ghana at large. He promised huge returns on investment, but in reality was using investments to keep up his lavish lifestyle. Many of his lies were relatively easily debunked--Blay was in prison when Nkrumah died and couldn't have been at his deathbed, and Blay struggled to explicate many of the particulars of his fictitious trust fund--but, as Yeebo points out, the scheme targeted primarily greed-driven, information-poor business people from outcultures like the US and UK, so the initial bar was low and the ritual of involvement carried many victims through what should have been a wool-removing stage.
I can't imagine that Blay, known to lie through his teeth to nearly anyone, was an easy research target, but Yeebo did an excellent job of divining the truth under each lie. She also did a great service in pointing out the broader context that Blay existed in, where he'd been swindled by the colonial rule of the Gold Coast and by Western misinterpretations of Africans at the tail end of the 20th century. As Yeebo put it, the people of Ghana also had reason to believe Blay's claims--the country's riches had been drained by the English, and it was logical to think they had to be somewhere; like with Blay, though, they had been taken only to self-enrich.
june nf book club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u4Ekf4JAlg