Ethiopia: the Two Last Frontiers represents the culmination of a life's work focusing on the political history of Ethiopia and the wider Horn. John Markakis maps the process of state-building in Ethiopia, putting particular emphasis on two frontiers. One is the physical frontier dividing the highland centre and highland periphery from the lowland periphery. The other is the quest for political legitimacy, a frontier Markakis argues has still not been breached today. Published a year before the death of Meles Zenawi, this volume remains as relevant as ever, emphasising the importance of tracing the ongoing struggles over these two frontiers.

His book is clearly organised into five parts. The first provides an overview of the lowland periphery, beginning with a brief description of the differences between highland and lowland that have framed the challenges of state-building in Ethiopia. It continues with a series of ethnographic portraits of the main lowland communities in a large arc from Afar south to the Somali region, then on to Borana, South Omo, Gambella and Benishangul-Gumuz.

The rest of the book covers the state-building project itself, sequentially examining the three frameworks that have shaped the Ethiopian polity: the imperial model, the socialist model, and the federal model. By organising the book in this way, Markakis emphasises role of rupture in Ethiopian state-building – moments when the centre has fallen apart due to the strain of maintaining its hegemony over subordinate groups in the periphery.

The focus on disagreement in the centre about how to manage relations with the periphery as well as the changing nature of those relations allows Markakis to emphasise the contestation and negotiation involved in statehood. The indeterminate nature of state-building processes during three different regimes connects the lessons of Ethiopian politics to power struggles across the continent – useful when research on Ethiopia has often been cordoned off from African studies.

The book could have been improved with a thorough edit. The rich material put together by the author represents a veritable encyclopedia, especially useful to non-specialists interested in an overview of Ethiopian political history beyond the Abyssinian core. However, as it stands, the book is at times repetitive, with inconsistent spelling of place and group names, not helpful for the Ethiopianist beginner. In addition, the early ethnographic sections are a little too fragmented. However, the book soon comes into its own when it moves on to the history of imperial and socialist rule. These historical sections draw on Markakis's previous work, reading smoothly and providing a well-connected summary of events.

The book is most valuable for the detailed history it provides of lowland periphery. In particular, Markakis carefully describes how the EPRDF worked to recapture control of the lowlands after the fall of the Derg. His history allows for a greater understanding of how elites involved in organising liberation fronts across the region have cycled through different movements and political bodies, including most recently some of the Peoples Democratic Organisations used by the EPRDF to organise political activity in the regions.

Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers represents a mammoth addition to literature on the political history of Ethiopia, and will be a useful resource for scholars working on the region for many years to come. A second streamlined edition would ensure the book's longevity.