391 Ronald J. Herring, Land to the tiller: The political economy of agrarian reform in South Asia. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1983. 314 pages. This book is an intelligent mainstream evaluation of land reform dogma and practice in South Asia. Because it is intelligent, it perceives many in- adequacies in the theoretical supports of land reform. Because it is mainstream, its evaluation that land reform in all its varieties throughout South Asia has failed truly is scathing. That the ultimate conclusion it urges is to push forward with land-to-the-tiller reform, in spite of its widespread failure, betrays the ideological rather than analytical impetus for land reform among mainstream western advisers. The original analytical supports for land reform were economic. The problem was that the bulk of South Asians were poor. Since most farmed, the obvious solution was to increase productivity in agriculture. This would directly raise the incomes of farmers. In addition, this would release inputs to industry and so further raise Asians' incomes. So, attention turned to conditions in agriculture. Agriculture in South Asian and other LDC's (Lesser Developed Coun- tries) was characterized by unequal holdings of land farmed under various tenures. Most earned incomes from labor hired out. The bulk of the re- mainder farmed for share or less frequently fixed rents. A few farmed their own lands; if on larger holdings, with hired-in labor and lower outputs per acre. Marshallian economics deduces that hired workers will stint labor, that fixed renters will stint land improvements, and that share tenants will stint both. It concludes that agriculture will be inefficient to the extent that cultivators are not owners. Marxian economics argues that agriculture is organized to preserve landlords and inequality, and should not be expected to produce efficiently or fairly. By either calculus, reform toward owner- cultivation is called for. Of course, the Marshallian theory is incomplete, for it fails to consider the interest of the landlord in workers' and tenants' efforts. Both the Mar- shallian and Marxian models seem wrong in fact: the data of Chapter nine and of most other studies of LDC agriculture find no decline in farm effi- ciency with increases in tenancy or in holding size. But, in the end, most experts ignore the inadequacies of economic arguments for land reform and reaffirm the need for more reform faster. Indeed, the author of this book does so. After discrediting all economic arguments for reform, he of- fers an explicitly Rawlsian argument that non-landlords are poorer than landlords (p. 261) and that land is not produced and therefore payment for its product serves no function (p. 274). So, after deriving a land reform balance sheet that finds only negative pay-off for reform throughout South Asia, the author calls for fast equalization of land holdings to all, and