The Making of Modern Ethiopia: 1896-1974. By Teshale Tibebu. (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1995. Pp. xxvii, 246. $16.95.)

The study of Ethiopian history has come far since the 1960s, when it first emerged as a subject distinct from historical philology. In the intervening decades, scholars have produced a sophisticated historiography, rich in insight and erudition, which has not shirked the challenges created by the "repertoires of contention" in Ethiopian politics and ...