Dictatorships

Just arrived on my doormat is an excellent book - Pol Pot's Cambodia - aimed at 14-18 year olds which does a comprehensive job in explaining to teenagers the roots of the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and the internal workings of his merciless forces that resulted in a devastating iron-grip over Cambodia in the 1970s. It's 160 pages are educational, factual and informative, it carries a wealth of photographs, biographies, a timeline and glossary, and if translated into Khmer would give Cambodia's schoolchildren a real insight into who and what happened to their country. Published by Twenty-First Century Books in their non-democratic Dictatorships series, the author is Matthew Scott Weltig, a former university lecturer well-versed in Asia. Other books in the series include Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Kim Jong Il's North Korea and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe - and they highlight some of the world's most feared and ruthless regimes.