Building on the first edition, this updated volume focuses on the personalities, from the founders of Liberia, to the soldiers who are responsible simultaneously for destruction and the hope of stability. Along with these people, various social and ethnic groups, political parties and labor movements, economic entities and natural resources are profiled in this updated work.

D. Elwood Dunn is Professor and Departmental Chair of Political Science at the University of the South. He has taught at Seton Hall and Fordham Universities, Cuttington College, and the University of Liberia. He served in the government of his native Liberia (1974-1980), becoming a member of the cabinet. Dunn was editor of the Liberian Studies Journal, 1985-1995. Amos J. Beyan is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History at Western Michigan University. He has taught at the Kakata Teacher Training Institute, the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, and Youngstown State University. Carl Patrick Burrowes is Associate Professor of Communications at Howard University. He has worked both as a journalist and a teacher of mass communication. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, West Africa, and Emerge.