Jeffrey Ahlman's impressive work provides a detailed assessment of Nkrumah's life, as well as his emancipatory pan-African political project. The concise book introduces the subject, provides historical narrative surrounding Nkrumah's early life in Ghana, his overseas experiences in the USA and England, followed by an analysis of his political career in Accra and eventual exile. The book concludes by considering the contested legacy of Nkrumah as Ghanaian and African. Building upon this well-chosen structure, Ahlman provides excellent insight in relation to the historical detail of Nkrumah's life and, perhaps most crucially, reflects on the vision of Nkrumah as a political actor.

In the context of the book's discussion of Nkrumah's political journey, the text, for example, provides important assessment of Nkrumah's evolving stance regarding the viability of Gandhian strategies and non-violence in the face of a bloody neo-colonialism. It also offers informed reflection upon Nkrumah's evolving relationship to the Western powers. Notably, it highlights Nkrumah's remarks that ‘the whole of London had declared war on me personally’ amid English passivity to the horrors of colonialism during Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. It also documents Nkrumah's aversion to the imperial doublespeak of Winston Churchill in terms of the principle of self-determination enshrined in the Atlantic Charter, given the latter's solid defence of Empire (although the text refrains from explicitly highlighting Churchill's racialist worldview here).

Later the book reflects upon Nkrumah's publication of Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. It details how that work's expansion of the critique of neo-colonialism to include non-European capitalist powers, namely the USA, provoked the ire of Washington. The book also firmly points to the role of fascist Portuguese colonialism as one of the key reasons for Nkrumah's growing resolution that violence would be necessary for the true liberation of Africa. Moreover, the book rightly places focus on Nkrumah's economic agenda for Africa and details his attempts to diversify Ghana away from colonial export models.

At times though the book could have done more to depart from traditional historical analysis to reflect more upon the contemporary resonance of Nkrumah's life and political project. Indeed, this contemporary resonance is hinted at throughout many key passages but is not expanded upon. For example, the book's discussion of Nkrumah's distaste of the imperial doublespeak of England's wartime hero, Churchill, strongly resonates with contemporary trends in UK–Africa relations. Specifically, in terms of the Johnson government and its neo-colonial doublespeak that ‘Global Britain’ will bring jobs and investment to Africa, while using foreign aid for the imposition of regressive Brexit free trade deals. Furthermore, Nkrumah's fears for Africa amid the instalment of corrupted domestic elites (which the book highlights) strongly resonates with current French interference in Libya and the Sahel, as well as British and EU aid to the increasingly violent regime of Yoweri Museveni in Uganda. Pointing out these current parallels would have done more to highlight the continued relevance – and hence the intellectual significance – of Nkrumah's written body of work. The book could also have usefully reflected more upon Nkrumah's legacy in terms of the African Union and pan-African economic strategies, as ostensibly embodied in the recently implemented African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), whose Secretariat is based in the Ghanaian capital (notwithstanding the neoliberal logics of that African Union initiative).

Overall, the book provides an excellent assessment of Nkrumah and his historical life and political project. However, given the obvious relevance of Nkrumah's critique of neo-colonialism for African foreign affairs today, it would have been a further strength if the text had dwelled more upon the ongoing importance of Nkrumah's critique of external actors’ power plays and ‘development’ interventions in the continent. As the conclusion of the book highlights, ‘Nkrumah Never Dies’, although one might add here, ‘While Neo-Colonialism Lives’.