Howard W. French thinks Nkrumah deserves better. French was a longtime Africa correspondent for the Times, and, in “The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide” (Liveright), he calls Nkrumah “comparable in his impact on the world of his era to Mandela, and even Gandhi.” French grew up in Washington, D.C., but spent time as a young man visiting family in West Africa, where he met his wife, and where, he recalls, his light skin and “sandy afro” made him conspicuous. He is especially attentive to the way Nkrumah was influenced by Black Americans, and how he influenced them in turn, by showing what Black political power might look like. (Ebony marked Ghana’s independence with photographs of Nkrumah and thirteen of the new government’s cabinet members, all of them Black.) Richard Wright and Maya Angelou travelled to the country, and both wrote books about their time there. “I was soon swept into an adoration for Ghana as a young girl falls in love,” Angelou wrote, “heedless and with slight chance of finding the emotion requited.”