When LIFE decided to do a story on rice as the world's most important food, its editors sent Arthur Rickerby on an eight week expedition to the Philippines, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and India. The result: encyclopedic imagery of Asian agriculture. When LIFE World Books asked him to do the photographs for its edition on Northern South America, he spent six weeks capturing the essence of life in Colombia, Venezuela, Surinam, French Guiana and Guyana.

   He traveled to Brazil during a coffee crisis, to Morocco to document siesta-taking, to Tennessee when Jimmy Hoffa bribed a jury, to Denmark at the invitation of the Danish government, to Montana to capture prairie dogs as they peeked from their holes, to Korea to check up on the cease fire there. etc. etc.

   On the pages that follow you will find Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller leaving a hospital — Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug relaxing on a concrete bridge abutment — Mickey Spillane leaping as he fences — Emmett Kelley balancing a feather on the tip of his nose — Princess Margaret celebrating Jamaican independence — and much, much more.

   Stories on life styles and recreation, portraits of celebrities, images of everyday life — all yielded the photographs in this section.