I love Bowden’s book! I have a few suggestions for further reading.

The first is my favourite book on the subject, Philip Short’s ‘Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare’. If you were going to read one book on the subject, at all, I would suggest this one. This book is also highly recommended by David Chandler, one of the most prominent scholars of Cambodian history.

In a similar way to ‘Hue’, Short presents to you exactly what you need to know to make the period in question make sense. Beginning primary in the early 20th century the author, an experienced journalist who had spent much of the 70’s in China, gives a truly engaging account of the Khmer Rouge regime. Told through a biography of Pol Pot, he weaves in the ‘close to home’ reasons for the atrocities of the CPK, as well as those stemming from foreign influence.

Naturally there are many autobiographies from survivors if you wanted a closer look at the effects of this regime on an individual, Pin Yathay’s ‘stay alive my son’, the one that I would also recommend.

Connecting the Vietnamese dots with the Khmer ones in particular might be best achieved through Ben Kiernan’s early work ‘how Pol Pot came to power’, but I find his writing style to be less accessible/interesting. Particularly in comparison to someone like Short or Chandler.

If you are fan of history podcasts then I could also recommend my own that is aimed at explaining the Khmer Rouge revolution within the context of Cambodian history. (In the shadows of Utopia)