Description: What was the nature of the regime that turned Cambodia into grisly killing fields and murdered or starved to death a million and a half of the country's eight million inhabitants? In this riveting book, the first definitive account of the Khmer Rouge revolution, a world-renowned authority on Cambodia shows how an ideological preoccupation with racist and totalitarian policies led a group of intellectuals to impose genocide on their own country.

"A deeply detailed, meticulously reported history ... important, valuable and worth reading.... Kiernan documents the killing with impressive specificity, using interviews with survivors to escort the reader to every part of the country...The testimony and documentation Kiernan amasses is quite powerful...This is after all a work of scholarship that will be one of the most widely used reference books on the Cambodian tragedy". -- Sydney H. Schanberg, The Nation

"Authoritative". -- Richard Gough, Times Higher Education Supplement

"One of the most important contributions to the subject so far, and one which neither specialist scholars nor general readers can afford to ignore". -- R. B. Smith, Asian Affairs

"Definitive". -- London Review of Books

"Impressively researched and deeply disturbing". -- Sunday Telegraph

"This important book thoroughly documents what happened and plausibly explains why. In all probability it will remain the definitive work on the subject for many years". -- Asian Thought and Society

"Perhaps the most complete account of Pol Pot's terror and the closest to Cambodian sources". -- The Economist

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