-Ottaway, a leading specialist on Ethiopia, has edited this volume based on a conference held at Johns Hopkins University. She gives a staggering delineation of the problems of state formation in Ethiopia, focusing on boundary disputes around the turn of the century, on Ethiopia's insistence on holding on to Eritrea after WW II, on Ethiopia's lack of democracy, and on its inability to maintain law and order. She points out that Ethiopia faces all of these problems at once and that the military "revolution" of 1974 has not been able to remedy any of these conflicts or the additional problems of the economy. Leading specialists tell this dismal story in 11 chapters; five articles deal with the Ethiopian state, the revolution and society, and politics. The problem of the "national question" is covered in four chapters, and development and agriculture is treated in two chapters. The quality of the contributions varies, but taken together the volume represents a valuable analysis of a complex subject. In the final chapter on "Revolution, Nationality, and the Ethiopian State," Clapham concludes on the ironical note that mobilizational Leninism has given political rivals in the state the organizational capacity to resist the political center. Recommended for college libraries and especially for research collections. —Choice