"Towards the beginning of this massive biography, Short cautions readers against dismissing the terror of Pol Pot's regime as the incomprehensible work of evil men. Instead, Short argues, the explanations for the Khmer Rouge regime, which resulted in the death of over one-fifth of Cambodia's population, or 1.5 million people, are 'rooted in history.' The book begins its search for these explanations in the early life of Saloth Sâr, a 'mediocre student' whose political disengagement offered no hint of the ideological nightmare he would fashion under the name Pol Pot. As a student in Paris, Sâr's political philosophy slowly began to take shape, and the book deftly follows his political evolution abroad as a part of the 'Cercle Marxiste' against the backdrop of the tumultuous history of Cambodia after the war. Short, a former BBC correspondent who has also written an acclaimed biography of Mao Zedong, moves between Sâr's personal story and the broader history with ease. By the time these two narratives converge in the lucid and harrowing description of the Khmer Rouge victory and subsequent evacuation of Phnom Penh city, the book has already laid the groundwork for the horrors that would follow. Occasionally, Short's attempts to understand Pol's psychology lapse into vast over-generalization, as when he attributes Pol's erratic behavior to 'the perpetual Khmer tendency to take things to extremes.' More often, though, Short expertly identifies the historical and ideological causes that generated the Khmer Rouge impulse to terror and that eventually led to the regime's collapse. Though daunting in length, Short's book offers a copiously well-researched and surprisingly accessible portrait of Pol that will prove indispensable to anyone interested in the subject." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Deeply unsettling, Short's probing analysis reveals how the loftiest of political ideals can become the justification for the cruelest brutality. A chilling portrait." Booklist (Starred Review)

"A superbly wrought, richly nuanced study in evil, though more likely to attract discussion for its controversial conclusion than its careful rendering of its murderous subject." Kirkus Reviews

"[A] well-written narrative possessing both shocking detail and thoughtful analysis....At times, the horrible nature of the subject elicits a haunting feeling when one contemplates the future of civilization. Highly recommended." Library Journal

"Were this biography a novel, I would apply the word 'verisimilitude' to much of it, for Short's Pol Pot possesses a detailed reality whenever he appears. ... His account of Pol Pot's final two decades is of exceptional interest." William T. Vollman, The New York Times Book Review

A gripping and definitive portrait of the man who headed one of the most enigmatic and terrifying regimes of modern times. This powerful biography reveals that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia were not a one-off aberration but instead grew out of a darkness of the soul common to all peoples.

Philip Short has been a foreign correspondent for The Times (London), The Economist, and the BBC in Uganda, Moscow, China, and Washington, D.C. He is the author of the definitive biography of Mao Tse-tung, and lived in China and Cambodia in the 1970s and early 1980s, where he has returned regularly ever since. He now lives in southern France with his Chinese wife.