Using a great power-small power theoretical approach and advancing a supplier-recipient barganing model, Jeffery Lefebvre attempts to explain what the United States has paid for its relations with two weak and vulnerable arms recipients in the Horn of Africa.

Through massive documentation and extensive interviewing, Lefebvre sorts through the confusions and shifts of the United States’ post-World War II relations with Ethiopia and Somalia, two primary antagonists in the Horn of Africa.  He consulted State Department, Pentagon, and AID officials, congressional staffers, current and former ambassadors, and Ethiopian and Somali government advisers.

The story of U.S. arms transfers to northeast Africa is tangled and complex.  In 1953, 1960, and 1964-66, the United States entered into various arms provision deals with Ethiopia, spurred by the Soviet-sponsored buildup in the region.  Policy changed in the 1970s: Nixon refused a large aid request in 1973, and in 1977 Carter ended Ethiopia’s military aid on human rights grounds and denied aid to Somalia during the 1977-78 Ogaden War.  Reversing this policy, the Reagan administration extended military aid to Somalia despite its aggressive moves against Ethiopia.  Changes in U.S. relations and the revolution in Somalia have altered the picture once more.

Jeffery Lefebvre concludes that U.S. diplomacy in northeast Africa has been overly influenced by a cold war mentality.  In their obsession with countering Soviet pressure in the Third World, Washington decision makers exposed U.S. interests to unnecessary risks and given far too much for value received during four decades of vacillating and misguided foreign policy.

Arms for the Horn should interest all concerned with arms transfer issues and security studies, as well as specialist in Africa and the Middle East.

Conflicts in the Horn have all too often dominated press coverage of Africa. This book exposes the subtle and ambiguous role ethnicity can plan in social conflict, a role that is nowhere as simple and direct as commonly assumed.

Social conflict is routinely attributed to ethnic differentiation because dividing lines between rival groups often follow ethnic contours and cultural symbolism has proved a potent ideological weapon. The purpose of this book is to examine the nature of the bond linking ethnicity to conflict in a variety of circumstances.

The diverse groups are involved in confrontations at different levels and varying intensity, ranging from elemental struggles for physical survival of groups at the margin of society, to contests for state power and control of resources at the center.

These ten studies from Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya are based on primary research by anthropologists and historians who have long experience of the region. The insights gained from this comparative work help to refine common assumptions about conflict among ethnic groups.

Set in Oregon in the early years of the twentieth century, H. L. Davis’s Honey in the Horn chronicles the struggles faced by homesteaders as they attempted to settle down and eke out subsistence from a still-wild land. With sly humor and keenly observed detail, Davis pays homage to the indomitable character of Oregon’s restless people and dramatic landscapes without romanticizing or burnishing the myths.

Clay Calvert, an orphan, works as a hand on a sheep ranch until he stumbles into trouble and is forced to flee. Journeying throughout the state, from the lush coastal forests, to the Columbia Gorge, to the golden wheat fields east of the Cascades, he encounters a cast of characters as rich and diverse as the land, including a native Tunne boy and a beautiful girl named Luce.

Originally published in 1935, Honey in the Horn reveals as much about the prevailing attitudes and beliefs of H. L. Davis’ lifetime as it does about the earlier era in which it is set. It transcends the limitations of its time through the sheer power and beauty of Davis’ prose. Full of humor and humanity, Davis’s first novel displays a vast knowledge of Pacific Northwest history, lore, and landscape.

An essential book for all serious readers of Northwest literature, this classic coming-of-age novel has been called the “Huckleberry Finn of the West.” It is the only Oregon book that has ever won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. With a new introduction by Richard W. Etulain, this important work from one of Oregon’s premier authors is once again available for a new generation to enjoy.

In Imagining Ethiopia, Sorenson examines Western mass media images of Ethiopia, placing them in the context of a larger discourse on the Third World. Sorenson shows how our image of Ethiopia has been developed by reporters and photographers who blamed the famine on African backwardness and ignored its historical and political causes, which include a colonial history, militarization, and the circumstances of Africa's integration into the world market.