Two books written by members of the Harvard faculty are to appear this week from the University Press. A. N. Holcombe '06, professor of Government and J. F. Sly, lecturer and tutor in the same department are the authors. Professor Holcombe's work is entitled "The Chinese Revolution", and Sly's books is "Town Government in Massachusetts."

Holcombe, on a sabbatical leave during 1927-1928, spent his vacation in China, visiting Siberia and Moscow on his return trip. During this period, he received first-hand information concerning the Chinese Revolution. He saw the last stages of the expedition to Peking, come into contact with the leaders of both sides, and thus acquired direct knowledge of the situation.

In his book he discusses the political, economic, and social conditions of China, with their relation to the revolution. He deals with the attempt and failure of the Chinese to imitate the West, the part played by the Bolsheviks and the failure of the Soviet government there.

Sly's Volume is Timely

Sly's work deals with a subject never before treated, and his book is exceptionally timely in connection with the Tercentennial celebration. The treatment includes the history of town government in Massachusetts from the very first settlement until the present time. Sly says in his preface:

"The steady and continuous unfolding of a local institutional pattern contains within it the historic facts from which spring many of those generalizations which from the fibre of political thought. There is a new understanding that comes with a long perspective; there is a judicious tolerance towards contemporary institutions that grows from a grasp of past usefulness; and there is an impetus to orderly progress in the description and analysis of those present-day adjustments through which perplexed communities aim to regulate the rapid and often extreme transitions that art a phenomenon of modern life. Broadly, the application of these observations to one of America's most distinguished political experiments--the Massachusetts town meeting--forms the purpose of this brief study."