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Pol Pot: The History Of A Nightmare

3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 · rating details · 318 ratings · 51 reviews

Observing Pol Pot at close quarters during the one and only official visit he ever made abroad, to China in 1975, Philip Short was struck by the Cambodian leader's charm and charisma. Yet Pol Pot's utopian experiments in social engineering would result in the death of one in every five Cambodians--more than a million people.
How did an idealistic dream of justice and pros...more

449 pages

Published (first published 2004)

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Dec 20, 2012 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: utopians

Shelves: history-will-teach-us-nothing

Rewritten in honour of the Mayan Calendar and it being the final day of the entire world and all that.

So this book is a history of the way the world really did end in one particular country.

I imagine at some point in the early 70s Saloth Sar, later to be cutely renamed as Pol Pot, was listening to the radio and on came that well known utopian anthem Imagine :

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in pea...more Rewritten in honour of the Mayan Calendar and it being the final day of the entire world and all that.

So this book is a history of the way the world really did end in one particular country.

I imagine at some point in the early 70s Saloth Sar, later to be cutely renamed as Pol Pot, was listening to the radio and on came that well known utopian anthem Imagine :

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can...

and dweedly dweeb. And he thought, in a marxist-Leninist-Maoist kind of way - "yeah, that's it! only it should go something like

Imagine there's no money and no cities too
None of that Western education
And no medecine too
Imagine there's no families
That would be pretty easy to do
Imagine all the people
Being driven out of the cities at gunpoint and forced to work at vast crazy agricultural projects where they die like flies
You-ou-ouuuu you may say that I'm a dreamer
But my name is Saloth Sar
I'm sure someday you'll join me
in my utopiah

This book is a mad boggling journey into the darkest heart of insane utopianism. The Khmer Rouge were the all time most deranged revolutionaries ever to succeed in capturing a country and then imposing their madness on the whole population. Forget Apocalypse Now - the horror! the horror! ™ - Cambodia Year Zero (1975) really was the horror, the horror. Imagine the people of Vancouver or Glasgow or your own local big city being given 48 hours to clear out - and that includes hospital inmates. Those left after 48 hours will be shot by ten year olds in black pajamas. Imagine that.

Well, it all carried on happening for four years, until Vietnam invaded and removed Pol Pot and his fellow psychopaths. And everyone from the USA to Britain onwards condemned Vietnam for their aggression! Ha ha - you have to have a quiet chuckle over international diplomacy. Just think - when the USA and UK invaded Iraq to get rid of another crazy dictator, who only measured about 9 per cent on the Pol Pol Megalomania Scale, they expected everyone to perfectly understand the absolute necessity for it. And they were quite hurt when the rest of the world said er… not really.

Pol Pot attempted to get rid of everyone's ego, completely. The way he could tell you still had an ego was if you cared about anything apart from working with your bare hands on vast crazy agricultural projects where you were likely be dead within a month. Egos were bourgeois and were to be eradicated. So if you didn’t die like a fly, Pol Pot would send a ten year old in black pajamas round to find out why you were still alive.

Great book. Not for everyone, I can understand that.(less)

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May 28, 2012 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bad-guys, kind-of-depressing, groups-of-people, crime-and-punishment, to-the-left-to-the-left

I feel this book is sort of misleadingly packaged: it's not much of a biography, presumably because there's not a lot known about Pol Pot the man. Or maybe it is known but there's still just not that much to say: Short does dutifully record biographical details, but they never seem to add up to any fleshed-out understanding of a human being... And maybe that's the point. Maybe the dark emptiness at the root of the Khmer Rouge's ideology and actions is exactly that: a lack not just of humanity, b...more

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Jun 26, 2008 kevin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

way way too much information for me. excellent pics of people in black pyjamas.

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May 12, 2012 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I just started this massive tome, which should be very awful and depressing, right? I mean, savage insane dictator convinces everybody in the country to go nuts and die.

Yet I find humor here, which says more about me than about life in Cambodia in the 1930s.

Or does it?

"For the young, Phnom Penh in the 1930s was a place of wonderment...each spring crowds gathered to wtach the Royal Oxen plough the Sacred Furrow..." (p.26 in the hard cover)

Not too long after that tidbit we get into the concubine...more

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Jul 02, 2007 david-baptiste rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An excellent biography (most books on Pol Pot only focus on the years in power of the Khmer Rouge, not on the man's whole life, which is a truly strange one)--

Pol Pot, like Ho Chi Minh, General Giap and man other leaders of Southeast Asian revolutions, was educated in France--at the Sorbonne. (His favorite poet was Paul Verlaine.) He developed one of the trangest and most extremes revoltuions of modern times--a combination of Marxist/Maoist rhtoric with traditioanl Cambodian Buddhism and the inv...more An excellent biography (most books on Pol Pot only focus on the years in power of the Khmer Rouge, not on the man's whole life, which is a truly strange one)--

Pol Pot, like Ho Chi Minh, General Giap and man other leaders of Southeast Asian revolutions, was educated in France--at the Sorbonne. (His favorite poet was Paul Verlaine.) He developed one of the trangest and most extremes revoltuions of modern times--a combination of Marxist/Maoist rhtoric with traditioanl Cambodian Buddhism and the invocation of aa mythical Khmer "Angkor" Being whih dictated the actions undertaken in creating a new scoety from ground zero. The Khmer Rouge--razed society to the ground--getting rid of machines--getting rid of money--getting rid of al vestiges of the modern, outside world in order to return to the ancient and pure spirit of Angkor. At the same time, there ruthles policies of mass execution, torture, slavery--were based on on a foundation laid by Cmodian Buddhsim--the whole rhetoric of Khmer Rougse is a slight substitution of Marxist/Khmer/Angkor terms for Buddhist ones--but Buddhist beliefs remain, transalted into literal phsycial livings out of principals. That this becomes the nightmare world of the Killing Fields is one of the astonishing ways in which words can be shifted not as language on a page but as a direct literal emdoiments--actions--
To an outside observer, the world of Pol Pot appears insane--from theinside of its own logice--at first it seems rigourous--the points at which the lines of reasoning begin to come unravel and turn into nadness are chartedin great detail in Philip Short's very well written account in this book. A great deal I never underrstood before about the rise of the Khmer Rouge and how it functioned from day to day is very throughly explained. The instability of this suppsoedly monolithic strucutre is what kept it in a process of continuall killing--
One of the strangest things about Pol Pot was that no one had any idea that he was the leader of the Khmer Rouge until after they took power. He had remianed concealed in palin sight as a kind of minor figure, friendly and charming, but not a big player. This mastery of a deception which had gone for decdaes should have alerted people immediately to the danger he posed---but even when in full view, Pol Pot was able to keep what was going on very much a secret for quite some time to come.
Philip Short writes very clearly in exlaining a difficult subejct, one hard to rack through layers of secrecy--and how one of the most genocidal holocausts of modern times was created by a leader on his own people, people slaughtered for having a different idea, for wearing glasses, for knowing how to dirve--for the most innocent reasons, all in order to reduce society to ground zero.(less)

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Oct 08, 2012 Rob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Pol Pot is one of the great evil villains of the 20th Century. His leadership of the Khmer Rouge and its reign of terror during the "killing fields" era of mid-1970s Cambodia (Kampuchea) is well documented and explained in Short's excellent work.

I learned a lot from reading this book, and was reminded of things I had forgotten over the last 35+ years. Included here would be the China-U.S.-Thailand support of Pol Pot's regime as a counterweight to the USSR-Vietnam alliance, the idiosyncratic natu...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Sheri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I should probably stop reading books as informative and depressing as this one. I had started this biography of Pol Pot about a month ago and it has been my bedside companion since then, to be read about 10 pages at a time if I wake up at night & have trouble falling back to sleep quickly. When I was about 2/3 of the way through it, I read Samantha Power's book (A Problem From Hell: American And The Age Of Genocide) on my Kindle, one chapter of which addressed the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cam...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Gene Smith added it · review of another edition

Dont Buy Philip Shorts Books Read why and what you are funding.

>>>Philip Short has writen Books mostly upon reading other peoples books like
David Chandler. Philip short takes several books sorts them out, gathers
pictures. Philip makes his own theory about culture. I see many men and women
challange him in colleges. Although Philip Short has the right idea's because
how could he not, he read the books of David Chandler. Mr Short makes false
claims. No one can back up his storys. Philip Shor...more

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Dec 01, 2010 Nicola rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, non-fiction

Every couple of years, I feel inspired to pick up a big, heavy tome of a history book. I think to myself: “YES. History! I love history! History helps us to understand ourselves. It’s so important to read history books.”

Then, almost invariably, I make it through 100 pages of said heavy tome and it just defeats me. This always makes me feel slightly worthless, but in my defence, most history books are (1) really badly written and (2) far too minutely detailed to interest a casual reader.

Pol Pot h...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Looking for a book to read on the terrors of the Khmer Rouge while I was in Indochina over the past three weeks on holidays, I was fortunate enough to come across GR chum Paul Bryant's excellent review of this book - and based upon the things he had to say, I purchased it and began reading immediately.

I was in Cambodia for the longest part of the vacation, and speaking with survivors of the KR horror while reading this book was almost surreal. But there was something very disturbing about what I...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Patrick McCoy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, non-fiction

Philip Short's book, Pol Pot: Anatomy Of A Nightmare (2004) is not a conventional biography. Rather it is more of a short history of the political events in Cambodia from about 1951 to present day, which explain how the Khmer Rouge came into power. Short has done an excellent job of putting together sources and explaining what happened to Cambodia during that era. This begins with trying to chase the French out. It continued with fighting the Viet Cong and being bombed into the stone age by the...more

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Dec 16, 2012 Chloe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, damn-the-man, imperialism, politics

Whenever a new friend is perusing my bookshelves, I always find myself mentally cringing when they reach a certain point awaiting the persistent judgment-laced query: "why do you have so many biographies on dictators and mass murderers?" It's a hard question to answer, if only because it means I have to unpack nearly a decade's worth of my own jumbled thoughts on idealism, social upheaval, human fallibility, and the inevitability of revolution; a task which often leaves the questioner glassy-eye...more Whenever a new friend is perusing my bookshelves, I always find myself mentally cringing when they reach a certain point awaiting the persistent judgment-laced query: "why do you have so many biographies on dictators and mass murderers?" It's a hard question to answer, if only because it means I have to unpack nearly a decade's worth of my own jumbled thoughts on idealism, social upheaval, human fallibility, and the inevitability of revolution; a task which often leaves the questioner glassy-eyed and drooling as their thoughts turn toward more comfortable musings. That's no fault of the listener though, but more a reflection of my own imprecise grasp of my own ideas. I don't have a fully formed ideology of any sort, but rather a hodgepodge of ideas that I weave together and take apart with the tenacity of an obsessive-compulsive arachnid. This rejection of dogma is, I think, rooted in the lessons learned from the chronicles on my Shelf of Tyranny- our history is chock full of recent examples illustrating the power of an idea to cause much upheaval and while I make ample time to read of success stories (my Shelf of Liberation is directly above my Shelf of Tyranny) I feel that there are more lessons to be learned through the failures. In the case of the Cambodian revolution and the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge, there are learning opportunities by the score.

Chronicling the rise of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) through, first, the struggle to end French colonialism, then to overthrow the monarchy of Prince Sihanouk, and finally to oust the military junta that took control following Sihanouk's abdication, author Philip Short places the revolution firmly in the context of a national history of struggle against outside invaders and the historic distrust for its Vietnamese and Thai neighbors. Likewise, he traces the evolution of the CPK's ideology back to its historical root in the French Revolution, by illustrating the commonalities between those two bloody epochs- the lack of an industrial class of workers made organizing the proletariat impossible so most of the organizing work was shifted onto the illiterate peasants in the countryside who were taught that they did not need to know the particulars of communism but merely needed to adopt the revolutionary struggle into their hearts, entrenching ignorance into the party platform, the struggle was primarily against the monarchy and the corrupt advisers and hangers-on who had found ways to enrich themselves at the expense of the peasantry. Most interesting to me, though, is Short's analysis on how Therevada Buddhism and its emphasis on the abnegation of personal desire and the self created the environment that would allow hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, mainly those forced to evacuate Phnom Penh after its capture by the CPK, to starve to death as they were forced into the countryside to work in the rice paddies as penance for their privileged lives under the old regime.

Put together from dozens of interviews with surviving CPK members, unprecedented access to historical archives, and news sources of the day, Short also does an amazing job at illustrating Cambodia's delicate position as a pawn between the Sino-Soviet struggle to control the Communist International, as well the love-hate relationship with its communist neighbor, Vietnam, a mercurial relationship that could flare into shootings and cross-border raids even as the two countries were working together to throw out American forces. All in all, this was a highly worthwhile read that served to broaden my understanding of modern Cambodian history. If Short gives short shrift to examples of the genocide, it is only because most books on the era already focus primarily on the atrocities and not the events that made such atrocities inevitable.

For those who seek information on the genocide, the amazing 1984 film The Killing Fields has already said all that needs to be said on the subject, and if the enigmatic Pol Pot never steps from the shadows to be analyzed as thoroughly as I had hoped, Short makes clear that this is due to Pol's obsession with secrecy and his desire to never be the face of the party, just the man pulling the strings from behind the curtain. There are tantalizing bits of biography that enter the text, such as the schizophrenia that plagued his wife, but throughout the book the Pol we are treated to is devoid of personality and is shown to be a leader with one goal in mind- revolution at all costs- a singular focus that would allow much to be done in its name.(less)

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Apr 25, 2012 Jack Bean rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

DON'T BUY PHILIP SHORT BOOKS, Philip Short Prays on young Asian Women. SEE WHY Philip Short Takes advatage of asian women married 5 times. Philip Short age 67 has a son same age as Ethel Daguyo / Ging Short age 20 His now wife.

OVERSEA'S JOURNALISTS Like Philip Short this is what they become.

Look at the links and Philip Short has been Raping Asians for 35 years.

http://evilwomen1.blogspot.com/2012/0...

Thats Philip Shorts Wife, This is how he met her.... http://www.porngt.com/sex/15653/Ethel...

ht ...more

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Feb 05, 2013 Ayshbot rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Exhaustively, meticulously researched. Not for the casually interested or faint of heart. Does an incredible job about painting a portrait of the build-up to the Khmer Rouge regime, and how one man in particular fit in. Pol Pol's sheer ordinariness is another reminder about the banality of evil.

Watch out for some language about the essential nature of Cambodians that veers into stereotype. But looking past that, Short has great insight into the way incompatible philosophies (Marxism, Buddhism,...more

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May 19, 2013 Harold rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Despite the title, this is more of a history of the Khmer Rouge (and mid to late 20th century Cambodia in general) than a proper biography of Saloth Sar. I was hoping to gain more insight into Pol's psychology and motivations, but there is very little of that provided in these pages. In fact, I came away from this narrative knowing much more about Norodom Sihanouk, Khieu Samphan, and Ieng Sary than "Brother #1".
Also, Short spends a few too many pages discussing the Cercle Marxiste and Pol's year...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Judith Johnson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have been interested in Cambodia ever since we visited there in 2011. The people seem so gentle, so kind, so friendly and laid back, it is hard to imagine why such a nightmare happened in this country. This book traces the whys and paints a vivid picture of the country and the people and their history. Perhaps this quote sums it up best:"...dicotomy between serenity and uncontrollable violence with no middle ground between...Each family, each individual is an island and its primary task is to...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Ronald Wise rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A biography of Saloth Sar, better known infamously as Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge and Prime Minister of Cambodia. This was the perfect book for consolidating and expanding my sketchy recollections regarding the American war in Southeast Asia and the tragic events after the Khmer Rouge took power. Especially interesting to me was how American involvment was viewed there, how it motivated people like Pol Pot, and how the cultural and military dynamics were far more complex than the Cold...more

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May 23, 2013 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: foreign-political-biography

This book claims to be a biography of Pol Pot, but because of the secretiveness of the Cambodian communist régime thee, it could better be described as a history of Cambodia told through the eyes of Pol Pot and his régime.

There are days when I wonder why I read books like this. When I read biographies, I like to read about people I respect, admire, aspire to be like, or achieved something. This book doesn't really cover any of these things, and when I read it, I found myself becoming ever more c...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Bro_Pair أعرف rated it 5 of 5 stars

An admirably solid book about one of the most bewildering stories of the twentieth century. I was never a fan of Lewis Carroll as a kid; "Alice in Wonderland" always scared me. This books inspired the same fear in me. I don't think I've ever been through a looking glass and found myself in a place as brutish and, well - insane as the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. Short is a good writer; his former career as a BBC journalist is apparent, in his unadorned prose, mistrust of simple narratives,...more An admirably solid book about one of the most bewildering stories of the twentieth century. I was never a fan of Lewis Carroll as a kid; "Alice in Wonderland" always scared me. This books inspired the same fear in me. I don't think I've ever been through a looking glass and found myself in a place as brutish and, well - insane as the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. Short is a good writer; his former career as a BBC journalist is apparent, in his unadorned prose, mistrust of simple narratives, and command of facts and characters. And most crucially, he largely does not attempt to produce a grand explanation for the eminently bizarre ideology and policies of Pol Pot; he doesn't really know, we don't either, and Pol Pot, nee Saloth Sar, never really knew, anyway.

What kind of a regime abolishes whole concepts, like "money" or "cities" or even "names"? Orwell shows his age to me now (read "Shooting an Elephant" for his truly malevolent racist colonizer's self-pity) but the Khmer Rouge seem to have distilled the most vicious drippings of 1984. Beyond Short's superb research, as well as his excellent narrative structure, he provides ample historical context for the tragedy of 1975-1978. While these may have been the three *worst* years of Cambodian history, it quickly becomes apparent many of the preceding and succeeding years were little better. Indeed, the canny, ruthless, histrionic King Sihanouk almost steals the book, like some good character actor in a bit movie part. Like J.T. Walsh, he's an intriguing heavy with a weird charm.

If the book has a message, I think it's one that is going to be difficult for most people to digest: we don't really know why we do what we do, and our capacity for remorseless evil is greater than we would like to imagine - more influenced by circumstance than we'd care to admit. The Khmer Rouge are the most inept Marxists in human history, barely able to understand basic concepts like class consciousness, or even what the proletariat is. It was not these precepts that swept them to power, nor even served as the engine behind the Tuol Sleng torture center.

The fact is, the Khmer Rouge was a bizarre nightmare, but one brought to fruition by many makers. The horrifying U.S. bombardment of eastern Cambodia is perhaps the most striking impetus for the Khmer Rouge's blistering rise to power. The U.S., France, Vietnam, China, the USSR, Thailand - all of these country's elites facilitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge, and in the case of China and America, coddled the exiled Pol Pot throughout the eighties, even after the full horror of the killing fields was all too apparent. The next time someone tells you about Reagan the Democratic Hero (TM), make sure they know: under his watch, we kept the fat and happy mass murderers of millions well-armed through Thai interlocutors. All because we and the Khmer Rouge shared one longtime enemy: Vietnam.

Short often essentializes the Khmer as violent, a disturbing theme throughout the book. It's not a convincing argument, anymore than it would be to call Germans or Palestinians irredeemably, culturally-ingrained killers. He tempers this argument in the closing pages of the book, and at least offers one compelling idea in support of a uniquely Cambodian quality behind the killing fields: it cannot have been easy to see the ruins of the Angkor Wat, center of an entire that controlled Southeast Asia, and now you were a small fish, prey to the whims of China, Vietnam, Thailand, and now, the U.S. and USSR.

As for Pol Pot himself? Never has the "banality of evil" been more apparent. He barely figures even in his own life story. A chilling coda - no witnesses can attest to ever seeing him lose his temper. Just smiling a trademark, toothy smile, no matter the subject.(less)

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Oct 18, 2009 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

Short's history/biography combines an engaging narrative flow with a good amount of detail. I am still not sure I understand how Pol Pot evolved from the mediocre student, Saloth Sar, and budding Marxist into the leader of a (briefly) successful revolutionary movement. Short does mention his later charisma, but if he possessed such an appeal in his early days, the book did not really show it. It did, however, do a brilliant job of showing how Cambodian culture, psyche and worldview were more imp...more

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Jul 22, 2008 Valerie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those committted to the details

Shelves: asian-histories, 2006-2008-singapore

I’ve yet to conclude this grim book, but several sets of ideas already stand out in Short’s excellent, exhaustive account.

One: Sar (Pol Pot) was not a particularly brilliant man, merely a dedicated one. Early on, he demonstrated an ease with living a dual life (important for his underground political activities and for concealing his identity as the Baddest brother); he was an undistinguished scholar (indeed, he barely degreed); he was deeply old-fashioned (revealed through the details of his ma...more I’ve yet to conclude this grim book, but several sets of ideas already stand out in Short’s excellent, exhaustive account.

One: Sar (Pol Pot) was not a particularly brilliant man, merely a dedicated one. Early on, he demonstrated an ease with living a dual life (important for his underground political activities and for concealing his identity as the Baddest brother); he was an undistinguished scholar (indeed, he barely degreed); he was deeply old-fashioned (revealed through the details of his marriage); he was always committed to Cambodian nationalism and exercised a fierce pride in Khmer ethnicity.

Two: It is clear that King Sihanouk missed an opportunity to exploit feelings of Cambodian nationalism, & win hearts through a celebration of Khmer-ness, made possible once he had expelled the French. (Oddly enough, it is difficult to avoid drawing the conclusion that Sihanouk’s efforts to squelch dissent and abolish the communists were well-founded--an instructive and disquieting lesson for those of us who pale at government crackdowns on dissent.) But it is also the case that the period of rebuilding the decimated Khmer Communist party occurred while Sihanouk’s attention was elsewhere.

Three: It is also clear that both the French and the Vietnamese did a fine job of helping to stimulate the Khmer Rouge. How the Vietnamese did so: The treatment that the Khmer Communists received at the hands of the Vietnamese Communists was a barely concealed disrespect and disinterest in maintaining Cambodian communism (the VN were invested in the idea of Indochinese unity through communism). But given the 1000+yr enmity between the countries, it is hard to believe that anyone was persuaded that VN’s intentions were anything other than predatory.

VN indifference was reflected in details such as insisting on a “peaceful transition” to communism, following Khruschev’s “parliamentary road to socialism” --despite the fact that it was obvious that such an approach wouldn’t be possible in Cambodia after Sihanouk rigged the only elections the country had held (in ’55 & ’58).

Meanwhile, "peaceful transition" struck the Khmer Commies as hypocritical, since VN re-launched its war against South Vietnam in 1959, and Laos resumed its armed struggle. Hanoi also insisted on a policy of cooperation with Sihanouk – HCM actually sent S. birthday greetings. So Indochinese solidarity declined in importance to the Khmers as it became clear that Khmer communism fell a distant third in priority to the Party, and in 1960 the Khmers called a Party Congress, reformulating their leadership and objectives w/out Vietnamese influence.

This move opened the way for an exclusively Khmer-focused party with idealist and poorly-understood Marxism as its basis. (They worked with a notion of Marxism divorced from concerns about material conditions and entirely rejecting the industrial basis at the center of a modern proletariat. Pol Pot's hodge-podge of half-understood, Lord of the Flies-style ‘inspiration’ actually would have been improved had they been better Marxists! But recall that I note that Sar wasn't much of a scholar.) (less)

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Jun 03, 2012 Srinivasan Iyengar rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Good book to read if you are a person interested in Cambodia and the Khemer Rouge story. While a lot of details of an otherwise elusive figure can be had in this book, at certain places the details get to be more than required making the reading a bit stretched. However this book beautifully brings out the simplicity and patience of the ordinary Cambodians who endured the worst ever tragedy to their society. Sincerely hope that we don't see he likes of polpot again in the world

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Sep 15, 2012 Clarissa added it

Shelves: historical, 2012, abandoned

I'm crying "Uncle" on this book. I tried everything to get through it, but this was a slog. I even tried my trick of dividing remaining pages by the number of days til my "read by goal date" and I couldn't even get through ten pages a day. I was really interested in the khmer rouge and the havoc they wrought on Cambodia, but this book didn't hold my attention. Phillip Short is a very thorough and factual writer; and had I had more background knowledge on Cambodia, Vietnam and their various trial...more

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Apr 10, 2009 Christie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It provides an interesting take on Cambodian history more than on Pol Pot, but occasionally gets bogged down in details on political maneuverings. Those pages might have been better spent supporting some of his more controversial claims with more substantive evidence, for example, that Khmer culture is particularly prone to brutality, or that the mass starvation under the Khmer Rouge was essentially accidental.

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Mar 08, 2013 Nancy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Whew! I am finally finished with this tome! I'm not much of a history buff, but I'm trying to remedy that. If you are very interested in Cambodia during the time of Pol Pot, read this book! Philip Short really helped me understand the vastly different mindset of the Cambodian people and how this atrocity happened. It still seems incomprehensible to me. Good book with lots and lots of information (450 pages)!

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Dec 12, 2012 Eric Stephan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Great, detailed bio of someone that is not easy to write a bio of. I didn't find the book depressing. But I did get a sense for the recipe that gave rise to the tragedy... Paranoia, ridiculous hubris, idealistic crap. And cambodia's own cultural issues that date from before pol pot was born. Very good book.

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May 21, 2011 Toggedout is currently reading it

I'm only on page 52, but I find this book quite enjoyable, if slightly too detailed. I'm not really a history buff (I prefer useless trivialities to actual substantive facts and or knowledge of trends) but this book seems ok so far though heavy handed on the details. We'll see if I can actually finish it.

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Feb 23, 2009 Alan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: library-book, non-fiction

Very detailed biography of one of the most bizarre and maniacal despots in world history. The author tried very hard to get to the "why" as much as the "who" and did a better job of the latter than the former. That said, I'm not sure anyone will ever be able to explain the "why".

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Jul 29, 2011 Jim Talbott added it · review of another edition

Didn't know much about the Khmer Rouge before I read this, and I can't comment on the accuracy of some of Short's assertions that many elements of the genocide were/are latent in Khmer culture, but many of the bureaucratic elements and personalities of the regime rang true.

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Feb 25, 2013 theokaraman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An extremely thorough biography of Saloth Sor, or commonly known as Pol Pot.
His origins and motives, foreign intervations, as well as the social structures in Cambodia that allowed him to kill millions, are not as a simple matter as one may think.

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Quotes from Pol Pot

“For if there is one lesson worth retaining from the travails of the Cold War and the miseries it brought in its wake, it is the folly of seeking simple answers to complicated questions. It is a lesson which governments still show no sign of learning.” — 1 person liked it

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title link	preview: Pol Pot: The History Of A Nightmare
avg rating	preview: Pol Pot: The History Of A Nightmare Goodreads rating: 3.77 (318 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185677.Pol_Pot?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348386677l/185677.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185677.Pol_Pot?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Pol Pot: The History Of A Nightmare by Philip Short[/url]

Pol Pot: The History Of A Nightmare

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