politalX Politics Store - The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 (Yale Nota Bene)
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List Price: £12.99
Our Price: £12.99
Availability: Usually dispatched within 11 to 12 days
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 959.604
EAN: 9780300096491
ISBN: 0300096496
Label: Yale University Press
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: 2002-09-02
Publisher: Yale University Press
Studio: Yale University Press
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: khymer rouge
Comment: This book is an excellent scholarly account of the psychotic Khymer Rouge regime which enslaved Cambodia from 1975 till its over throw by the Vietnanese in 1979. The massacres in cities, countryside and frontiers is well documented as is the agragarian slavery that was imposed.However the book can not fully describe the horrors of Tuol Seng prison (S21) alook round the prison will haunt you for life.
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Summary: Intersting but poor construction makes for difficult reading
Comment: Kiernan's book is a very thorough and detailed analysis of Pol Pot's regime during this period. However it lacks a coherent structure: the background to the Pol Pot era is very haphazard, and I found myself continually refering to other sources to learn about the politics of Cambodia prior to the Pol Pot era. The book as a whole would have benefited enormously from a brief chronology and historical "overview" of Cambodia's history prior to this period. As a piece of research however, the book is quite faultless. Kiernan has placed an enormous amount of effort into his research, and the massive amount of footnotes account for a book in themselves. His arguments are also very interesting: see especially the section entitled "The CPK Project" as it provides an illuminating and persuasive portrait of the attraction of the CPK project (up to roughly 1976) to the Cambodian peasants, painting a picture of the "attractiveness" of certain aspects of the Cambodian "revolution" which I hadn't really thought about before. Overall, this is a very detailed analysis of Pol Pot's regime - how it thought, acted and operated, but is a text which is written in such an academic manner that it becomes, at times, a laborious read. A more digestable prose would have helped immensely to understand the complexity of the author's arguments and findings.
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Summary: Poorly written, untenable explanation of Khmer Rouge.
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poorly written, untenable explanation of Khmer Rouge.
Comment: 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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Summary: A worth-while read
Comment: Gives great insight into the nature of the "Killing Fields" regime of Pol Pot and his clique. The downside is that it is a bit repetitive at times. However, definitely worth the time in learning the nature and strategy of this terrible time.
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