What was the nature of the regime that turned Cambodia into grisly killing fields and murdered or starved to death 1.7 million of the country's eight million inhabitants? In this riveting book, the first definitive account of the Khmer Rouge revolution, a world-renowned authority on Cambodia shows how an ideological preoccupation with racist and totalitarian policies led group of intellectuals to impose genocide on their own country. This edition includes a new preface recounting the fatal disintegration of the Khmer Rouge army, the death of Pol Pot, the United Nations' foray into the struggle to bring his surviving accomplices to justice, and the damning new evidence they could face.