It principal thesis is that many centuries of intensifying wet-rice cultivation in Indonesia had produced greater social complexity without significant technological or political change, a process Geertz terms "involution".Written for a US-funded project on the local developments and following the modernization theory of Walt Whitman Rostow, Geertz examines in this book the agricultural system in Indonesia and its two dominant forms of agriculture, swidden and sawah. In addition to researching its agricultural systems, the book turns to an examination of their historical development. Of particular note is Geertz's discussion of what he famously describes as the process of "agricultural involution" in Java, where both the external economic demands of the Dutch rulers and the internal pressures due to population growth led to intensification rather than change.

    It helps us to understand why Kolchak, former commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, hated the Reds.He led a counter revolution centered in Omsk, where he was installed as Supreme Ruler of All the Russias. Despite the gingerly support of American, British, French and Japanese forces, Omsk fell to the Red Army, doomed by its corruption and incompetence.Kolchak was handed over to the Soviets. This book throws light on Kolchak's nine-day interrogation in gaol and his fate.

    Professor Brownlie has confined himself to the pursuit, on historic lines, of an estimation of the extent of legal prohibition of the use of force by states. He includes the deliberations and findings of political organs of the League of Nations and the United Nations, as well as a study of the quality of prohibition of force, making some indication of relevant corollaries.