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.[7]