Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare (John MacRae Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)I approach this review with a background of five years of volunteer work in Cambodia (1995-2000) and marriage into a Khmer family. This is the best book I have yet read on the entire history of the Khmer Rouge years. It is more (fortunately) than a biography of Pol Pot -- it is just as much a history of Cambodia and and examination of its peoples' character, and shorter biographies of other prominent Khmer figures, especially King Sihanouk. The author scrupulously avoids the oversimplifications and falso moralizing of most books about Cambodia -- the ones that say either (1) the Khmer Rouge were entirely America's fault, (2) entirely Nixon's fault, or (3) entirely Kissinger's fault -- choose one. He carefully explores, among other things, American policy toward and conduct in Cambodia in the period leading up to 1975 in a thorough and neutral manner, with interesting suggestions on the significance of this and many other topics. In addition, the author's style is fluid and transparent, and he has done his homework. This is the best book about Cambodia I have ever read, and I have read all the ones I have been able to lay my hands on. Buy it even if you think you have no interest in the subject, or know it too well already -- you will be pleasantly surprised and will enjoy the book immensely.

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The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 Review

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(More customer reviews)This much heralded history by the Australian historian Kiernan has turned out to be a big disappointment. Despite his access to enormous amounts of information, he shows no talent for organizing the material, nor being able to discern what is important from what is trivial. His prose style is extremely dull. And as many reviewers have pointed out (e.g. New York Review of Books, Washington Post) his explanation of the Khmer Rouge (misnamed the Pol Pot regime) as being primarily motivated by racism, doesn't hold water. The overwhelming majority of the Khmer Rouge victims -- some of whom included many of my relatives -- were from the ethnic Khmer majority, not from Cambodia's ethnic minorities. Kiernan, as a former supporter of Pol Pot (until 1978) who is now a supporter of the current Hun Sen regime in Cambodia, seems determined to protect what he considers the "good" idea of communism from the bad reputation of Pol Pot. As an Australian educated Cambodian, who has studied the history of communism, I find Kiernan's perspective quite bizarre, not to say morally repugnant.A far better written and more reliable account of the topic is Elizabeth Becker's When The War Was Over. The most reliable academic history is David Chandler's Tragedy of Cambodian History and the relevant sections of his briefer History of Cambodia.

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