book".) After an extensive and thorough critical commentary on the contents of the book, Wolff concludes: "Ehret hat nichts weniger versucht als einen zukünftigen "Klassiker" zu schreiben....” ("Ehret has sought to write nothing less than a future "Classic"....) This particular book appeared in the same year as another comparative work on the same language family, Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova's Hamito-Semitic Etymological Dictionary: Materials for a Reconstruction. Two reviewers have given comparative assessments of the two books, John Greppin in the Times Literary Supplement, 1 November 1996, and Robert Ratcliffe in a paper, "Afroasiatic Comparative Lexica: Implications for Long (and Medium) Range Language Comparison". Greppin writes a strongly positive review; Ratcliffe takes a more negative stance toward both books. Ehret's 2001 book, A Historical-Comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan, has had a mixed reception. Václav Blažek, in a review article originally prepared for Afrikanische Arbeitspapiere, presents additional data, most of which, in his words, "confirm Ehret’s cognate sets". He continues, "The weakest point in the…monograph consists in semantics. Ehret’s approach is rather benevolent …. But in any case, in the present time Ehret’s work signifies big progress". The sociologist and linguist Gerard Philippson in his review in the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, also raises questions on some of the semantic connections, and he has doubts about the environments of certain sound changes proposed in the book. He has issues as well with Ehret's use of evidence from the Central Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan family, but he finds his arguments relating to the Eastern Sahelian (Eastern Sudanic) branch convincing and "solid". He avers in conclusion: "Même les chercheurs s'opposant à cette reconstruction disposeront, en tous cas, d'une somme de matériaux, clairement présentés dans l'ensemble, sur lesquels ils pourront s'appuyer pour mettre en cause ou rebâtir l'ensemble proposé. Il s'agit de toutes façons d'un travail qui ne saurait être ignoré." ("Even the researchers who are opposed to this reconstruction will have, in any case, an amount of material, clearly presented throughout, which they can rely on to either challenge or rebuild what is proposed. As a whole, it constitutes a work which cannot be ignored".) Roger Blench, a development anthropologist, published a critical comparison of Ehret's and M. L. Bender's comparative work on the Nilo-Saharan family in Africa und Übersee in 2000—from its date, seemingly written before the book came out. It may be based, in part, on a preliminary manuscript