LMVFAS (Let Me Vent For A Sec): It didn’t help that I listened (on Audible) to this 24.5 hour exhaustive (and at times exhausting) tome during my 60 minute commute home every day from DC over the course of what felt like two long months. I felt every slogging 15 minute rabbithole, every non-germane detail to the core of my aching lower back...this book could easily have been a bracing 10 hour ride without any of its power debased. My grand takeaway being that this is a better book to read vs. listen to since reading would give you better opportunity to skim the less important parts.
All that said, I can’t imagine there’s a more well-researched book out there on Ethiopia’s decades long resistance and eventual defeat of an overeager, over confident, overreaching wanna-be colonial power (i.e., Italy). Canadian author Jeff Pearce’s work is strongest as he brings to life the myriad actors, antagonists, and heroes of the saga. It’s worth noting that Pearce is a bit of a Selassie apologist but given the complicated history of Ras Tafari (yup that’s where that term came from) Makkonen’s reign, I imagine this can fall either way.
I won’t provide any further extensive notes on this book. One of my biggest criticisms of Audible is the lack of utility with regard to the its bookmark/clip Create Linkfunction. I had hundreds of 30 second bookmark clips for this 24 hour audiobook. As you can see below I tried to start going back through them, listening to each one and typing up the bookmarked quote. This became an exercise in ludicrousness (is that really a word)--who’s got time for this? I mean we landed a man on the moon like 100 years ago but there’s not a way to export the Audible bookmarks into a text file? Yes, I know there’s kind of a way to do this for Kindle purchases that you also buy the whispersync functionality for, but that’s not what I am talking about for.
*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.
Related writing on the Italian invasion is Maaza Mengiste's masterful novel: "The Shadow King
"--my review is here.My review of Mengiste's debut novel about a family during Ethiopia's Derg rule is here.
Key References (For Further Study):
Beneath the Lion’s Gaze
by Maaza Mengiste.The Shadow King
by Maaza Mengiste.The Man Called Brown Condor
by Thomas E. SimmonsThe best books on Ethiopia: start your reading here (The Guardian)
Notes from the Hyena’s Belly
by Nega MezlekiaCutting for Stone
by Abraham VergheseThe Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Parking Lot Attendant
by Nafkote Tamirat
Afevork Ghevre Jesus: One of ethiopia’s first novelists, and Emperor Selassie’s representative in Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afevork_Ghevre_Jesus
Wrote “A Heart-born Story”
https://www.selamtamagazine.com/stories/the-legacy-of-the-brown-condor
https://et.usembassy.gov/u-s-embassy-honors-the-legacy-of-colonel-john-c-robinson/
Chapter 4
Description of the first time an Black african nation had beaten a developed one in a war (1895-6). In addition the Ethiopians mutilated and amputated the captured Eritrean Askari that had fought for the Italians.
The climax of this was the Battle of Adwa.
Chapter 5
38:45 Robinson pilot opened the door for further airmen to get pilot training at Chicago’s Curtiss Wright School of Aviation by first working there as a janitor when they wouldn’t admit him--eventually an instructor got him a training slot. He later opened the John Robinson School of Aviation since in Robins, Illinois since other airfields wouldn’t let black pilots fly there.
