It's hard to overstate how fascinating - and, at times, sickening - this book was. The author gives a good overview of the origins of modern Cambodian nationalism, and ties that in to the origins of the Khmer Rouge. Then she shows how the Khmer Rouge isolated themselves and persuaded themselves into a self-destructive paranoid frenzy. And then we - the United States - supported the Khmer Rouge once they lost power, because China thought it was a good idea, and once you threw in a bunch of shitty Cold War logic, it added up to the U.S. supporting mass murderers in order to get back at the Vietnamese for fighting against our troops and our regime. Jesus, this shit is fucked up.