In 1975, Ung, now the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World, was the five-year-old child of a large, affluent family living in Phnom Phen. As well-educated Chinese-Cambodians, with the father a government agent, her family was in great danger when the Khmer Rouge took over the country and throughout Pol Pot's barbaric regime. Her parents' strength and her father's knowledge of Khmer Rouge ideology enabled the family to survive together for a while, posing as illiterate peasants, moving first between villages, and then from one work camp to another. Her restrained, unsentimental account of the four years she spent surviving the regime before escaping with a brother to Thailand and eventually the United States is astonishing. She describes the physical devastation she is surrounded by but always returns to her memories and hopes for those she loves. Her joyful memories of life in Phnom Penh are close even as she is being trained as a child soldier, and as, one after another, both parents and two of her six siblings are murdered in the camps.Twenty-five years after the rise of the Khmer Rouge, this powerful account is a triumph.

In the epilogue, Loung thanks her editor, because she's says without the editing, we'd all be reading a much longer book. In this case, I would love to read "the much longer book".... I can't say enough positive about the book, even though I know it has received criticism. It's a first hand account of the same stories I've heard first hand over.. Stories that deserve to be retold so that hopefully they never have to be experienced again. Whether you are an academic with an interest in Cambodia / Southeast Asia or the casual reader, you will be haunted a young girl's life..

Paul Rusesabagina, the inspiration for the Oscar nominated film, Hotel Rwanda, is not an ordinary man but an extraordinary one. He is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Civil Rights Museum's 2005 Freedom Award - rightly so. During the 1994 bloodbath in Rwanda that resulted in the slaughter of some 800,000 people, he sheltered over 1,200 in the luxury hotel that he managed.

It all began with the shooting down of a plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian presidents. Utter madness almost immediately ensued. When Rusesabagina turned to U.N. representatives for assistance their response was all but ludicrous.

How he managed to endure some 100 days of utter devastation and at the same time save the lives of others is a tale of heroic proportions. Here, in An Ordinary Man we're able to hear his story in his own words for the first time. He is candid about the details of that dreadful 100 days, as well as his personal views of actions that might have been taken by international peacekeepers.

Powerful, powerful, powerful!! A MUST-READ. .

There are no happy endings in Native American stories. I knew that before I read this book, but I was fascinated by Crazy Horse when Mom described the statue (never completed) to me.
This biography was read by the author, which was nice since he's a native Lakota speaker. The theme- the destruction of a culture systematically by the American government- is obviously quite sad.
I find it impossible to hear a story like this and to not wonder if things could have ended differently. What if the natives could have banded together, overcoming tribal differences for more than a few battles? American progress, in hind site, seems inevitable, but was it at the time? How different could our culture be today? Always depressing thoughts.

I first read this book in college for one of the TO philosophy- style classes. I don't really remember why we were reading it or much about it, but when a NAZI collaborator who went on to become a prominent French politican recently died, I decided to pick it up again.
Parts of it were dense and incredibly boring, but I think I got a lot out of reading it. There are different viewpoints and aspects to the rise of NAZI Germany that are discussed.
The man on trial, Adolf Eichmann, seems very strange. He is mainly interested in making himself look more important and did not at all seem to regret anything that he had done.
The main point is that it's amazing what people will do when just following orders.

This is a book that everyone in the 'Western' world should read. It details the failure of the UN Peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in the early 1990s, and what happens when the decision makers are more concerned with politics and ass-covering than taking action and doing the right thing.

The character Nick Nolte played in Hotel Rwanda was based on Dallaire, and the film is even more gut-wrenching than the book due to the fantastic cinematography. At times it is difficult to keep the names and acronyms straight, but there is a useful glossary at the back.

It is a horrifying book to read, and many of the descriptions of what the soldiers and staff of that mission went though have stayed with me. It is especially topical as another genocide is happening in Sudan right now, again demonstrating that the world powers just don't give a damn when it's a bunch of black Africans with no oil reserves being slaughtered.

This book describes all of the crimes against humanity initiated against the Congo by the Belgian King Leopold. By the end, I was disgusted at what had happened, but feeling admiration for the major players who risked everything to expose what was going on.
What happened was horrible, but I don't know if it was worse than the thousands of other horrible things that people do to one another. How to catalog them all? I don't know. This book gives an excellent detailed account of one such atrocity.