Dear All:
Two very distinguished Book Reviewers yesterday drew my attention to a new and very true OPUS that they have been contracted to, collaboratively, review for a refereed Journal in the new year (2019). It is a book by our own SIR Toyin Falola, the Jacob and Frances Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor of University of Texas in Austin: his 1,035-page tome, titled In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation (just published by Carolina Academic Press , LLC, 2019). With advanced praise blurbs by almost a dozen distinguished African and international scholars (including very prolific Ghana-born Indiana University Linguistics Professor Samuel Gyasi Obeng), it is a 21-chapter book within a book, in which SIR Toyin has paid unlimited and seriously-analytical tributes to tons of scholars, A point in case is especially in Chapter 6, sub-titled "Living Legends" (where I surprisingly found my own detailed analytical entry (pp. 220-27) among named distinguished Living Legends, coupled with my youngish-cum-handsome ink-on-paper drawn photograph by Dr. Kazeem Ekeolu (p.221). Other acclaimed Living Legends have been very well analyzed in the tome as well.
To SIR Toyin, in his Opus, an example of a Living Legend "may be a scholar who has been knighted or won a major prize, such as the Nobel," (p. 209). He, inter alia, added: " A number of African scholars fit the definition: People who have surpassed the descriptor of scholar and moved to a higher realm. In this chapter, I offer case studies of five scholars, who have ascended to the level of living legend. My examples are Kassahun Checole, Kenneth harrow, A.B. Assensoh, Mahmood Mamdani, and Nimi Wariboko. They have delivered distinctions , and each qualifies for a statue to be erected in their honor," (p. 209). Also, every Living Legend has had his ink-on-paper photograph depicted in the tome.
Above all, in his often mystical and spiritual ways of surprising his readers, SIR Toyin dedicated the heavy tome -- a real OPUS -- to Olamide Leonidas Falola, the very young grandson of SIR Toyin and His better half (Dr. Chief Lady Bisi Falola, First Lady of Pan-African University Press, PAUP).Indeed, what did come very promptly to my nimble mind, instantly, was whether young Olamide (Ola) could either lift or carry the 1,035-page Grandpa's tome on his tiny head! And, in the words of VC Aluko, there you have it, coupled with my extended unlimited and very deserving CONGRATULATIONS to Sir Toyin Falola, himself a Living Legend, indeed!
A.B. Assensoh.
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