Ethiopia has always held a special fascination for travelers going back to antiquity, but until the early part of the twentieth century, much of the country was inaccessible to all but the hardiest adventurers. In this exciting book, Paul Henze evokes the last years of what some might call a golden age, the decade before the turmoil that engulfed Ethiopia in 1974. Henze provides a mosaic of Ethiopia's culture as he examines its peoples, languages, and religions. Out of print for almost twenty-five years, this volume documents a period of Ethiopian history that was highly distorted by the communist regime of the 1970s and 1980s. This second edition has a new introduction and includes new images reflecting on Ethiopia's recent past and capturing the traditions and peoples of this ancient land.