"Bahru Zewde, one of the foremost historians of modern Ethiopia, has constructed a collective biography of a remarkable group of men and women in a formative period of their country's history. He traces their influence on the articulation and resolution of such central political issues as 'the national question', and the legacy of these reformist intellectuals on the revolutionary intellectuals of the 1960s and 1970s. It is a unique contribution to the intellectual history of both modern Ethiopia and modern Africa."--Jacket.