... what people are saying about this book ...'A marvelous recounting of Ethiopian and world history during those years. Mandatory reading for anyone interested in Third World relations and certainly for anyone who seeks to understand contemporary Ethiopian or Horn of Africa affairs.'?Foreign Service Journal?A significant primary source in its first hand account by a meticulously observant insider.'?Foreign Affairs?Commands attention and respect. John Spencer's personal, candid, and basically reliable record will have an honored place in the contemporary annals of that tortured country.'?Times Literary Supplement?Spencer is one of the very few living people in a position to describe Ethiopia's efforts to survive during those years.'?Library Journal?Spencer was privy to many important decisions. Of particular interest is his account of Haile Sellassie's disenchantment with the U.S.'?Publisher's Weekly?After the hard fate which befell the Emperor and his notables, Spencer is maybe the only one of the old regime's key persons still alive. There is hardly a single page one would want to miss.'?Sture Linner in Svenska Dagbladet?I found Ethiopia at Bay intensely interesting, sad and even tragic in the Greek mode. What a series of missed opportunities, anachronistic colonial arrogances, and western shortsightedness! The book would be enormously instructive to students of international relations generally.'?Lincoln Gordon, former President, Johns Hopkins University?Valuable indeed, Especially significant is Spencer's cogent analysis of the Emperor himself. Recommended for college, university, and larger public libraries.'?Choice.

For the past thirty years-under both Emperor Haile Selassie and President Mengistu Haile Mariam-Ethiopia suffered continuous war and intermittent famine until every single province has been affected by war to some degree. Evil Days, documents the wide range of violations of basic human rights committed by all sides in the conflict, especially the Mengistu government's direct responsibility for the deaths of at least half a million Ethiopian civilians.

The Ethiopian popular revolution of 1974 ended a monarchy that claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and brought to power a military government that created one of the largest and best-equipped armies in Africa. In his panoramic study of the Ethiopian army, Fantahun Ayele draws upon his unprecedented access to Ethiopian Ministry of Defense archives to study the institution that was able to repel the Somali invasion of 1977 and suppress internal uprisings, but collapsed in 1991 under the combined onslaught of armed insurgencies in Eritrea and Tigray. Besides military operations, The Ethiopian Army discusses tactical areas such as training, equipment, intelligence, and logistics, as well as grand strategic choices such as ending the 1953 Ethio-American Mutual Defense Agreement and signing a treaty of military assistance with the Soviet Union. The result sheds considerable light on the military developments that have shaped Ethiopia and the Horn in the twentieth century.

In Ethiopian Christianity Philip Esler presents a rich and comprehensive history of Christianity's flourishing. But Esler is ever careful to situate this growth in the context of Ethiopia's politics and culture. In so doing, he highlights the remarkable uniqueness of Christianity in Ethiopia. Ethiopian Christianity begins with ancient accounts of Christianity's introduction to Ethiopia by St. Frumentius and King Ezana in the early 300s CE. Esler traces how the church and the monarchy closely coexisted, a reality that persisted until the death of Haile Selassie in 1974. This relationship allowed the emperor to consider himself the protector of Orthodox Christianity. The emperor's position, combined with Ethiopia's geographical isolation, fostered a distinct form of Christianity--one that features the inextricable intertwining of the ordinary with the sacred and rejects the two-nature Christology established at the Council of Chalcedon. In addition to his historical narrative, Esler also explores the cultural traditions of Ethiopian Orthodoxy by detailing its intellectual and literary practices, theology, and creativity in art, architecture, and music. He provides profiles of the flourishing Protestant denominations and Roman Catholicism. He also considers current challenges that Ethiopian Christianity faces--especially Orthodoxy's relations with other religions within the country, in particular Islam and the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Esler concludes with thoughtful reflections on the long-standing presence of Christianity in Ethiopia and hopeful considerations for its future in the country's rapidly changing politics, ultimately revealing a singular form of faith found nowhere else.