In From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia, James McCann engages an interdisciplinary perspective to uncover the historical background to the persistence of famine in the northeast region of Ethiopia. His study focuses on the northern Wallo region, an area that was incorporated into Haile Selassie's modern state system and now one of the most devastated portions of the country.

The history of northern Wallo and its position within the modern Ethiopian state is presented through an examination of the circumstances in which its rural population lived, farmed, and adapted to...