From 1975 to 1979, the murderous Khmer Rouge regime of dictator Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians. And according to some historians, the American destabilization of Cambodia was probably the main cause of Pol Pot’s ascent. War can create, as well as eliminate, murderous dictators.

Not all victims were Cambodians. Indeed, some were Americans, and some foreigners suffered a fate worse than death. Before 1975, Frenchman Francois Bizot was arrested by the Communists, imprisoned, interrogated and tortured. Though a scholar of Buddhism and a friend to Cambodia, Bizot was suspected of being a CIA spy. He would ultimately be acquitted of this absurd charge and released. But he would remain in Cambodia to witness the eerie and epochal evacuation of Phnom Penh. His record of this time, The Gate, is a nightmarish indictment of the Pol Pot regime and all false utopias.

Bizot’s prison warden is a man named Douch, who would later oversee the extermination of 16,000 prisoners at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. Surprisingly, Bizot is sympathetic toward his captor. He records their numerous conversations, in which Douch is portrayed as a wily patriot whose main faults are his fanatical pursuit of justice and his extreme faith in an alien (indeed French) interpretation of revolutionary Marxism. Douch lobbies for Bizot’s freedom, and the two communicate long after the regime’s demise. The book also relates the frantic efforts by the French embassy in Phnom Penh to protect foreign citizens from the Communists’ severe vengeance. Fluent in Khmer, Bizot becomes the embassy’s liaison, and thus is required to make unbearable life-and-death decisions. Even now, Bizot is plagued with remorse over his actions and omissions.

The tale concludes at the Thai-Cambodian border where he and other refugees have been trucked to seek asylum. Here a married Frenchman coldly abandons his Cambodian mistress to her doomed country and, despite Bizot’s pleading, a Eurasian girl is also rebuffed. The ensuing scenes are a heart-wrenching condemnation of the Khmer Rouge and its curiously ostrich-like supporters, among them France and the United States.

Bizot indulges the often unthinking French hatred of Americans and “their irresponsibility, their colossal tactlessness, their inexcusable and false naivetŽ, even their cynicism.” But as these words might suggest, the anger expressed in The Gate is universal and its prose masterful. May it finally bring the Cambodian “sideshow” to center stage. Kenneth Champeon, a Thailand-based writer, is a regular contributor to www.thingsasian.com.

Author Willard Sterne Randall didn’t plan it this way, but his Alexander Hamilton: A Life comes at a time when a group of political devotees is hoping that Congress will remove Hamilton’s portrait from the $10 bill and replace it with that of President Ronald Reagan. Randall’s biography, which offers a fresh look at the many-faceted career of one of the Founding Fathers, becomes a persuasive response to that group’s wish.

If Hamilton’s only accomplishment were rescuing the infant nation from financial disaster, that would have been enough to ensure him a lasting name and America’s gratitude. But many readers, remembering from their school days only that George Washington’s “money man” was mortally injured in a duel with Aaron Burr, will be astonished to learn of Hamilton’s truly momentous achievements and a legacy equaled by few others in U.S. annals. Randall details Hamilton’s battlefield performance, which led to his becoming Washington’s most trusted aide-de-camp in matters of war and a favorite adviser in affairs of government; his authorship of most of the Federalist Papers, essays that helped to win New York’s ratification of the Constitution and to otherwise shape U.S. political institutions; his principal roles leading to the creation of the Coast Guard and the Navy; and, of course, his critical goals and decisions as the first Secretary of the Treasury. Randall contends that if Washington was the nation’s “indispensable man,” Hamilton was Washington’s indispensable man, even writing his Farewell Speech.

Author of previously acclaimed biographies of Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benedict Arnold and Benjamin Franklin, Randall provides more than a time-line of Hamilton’s accomplishments. We are given a flesh-and-blood Hamilton. While we sometimes encounter the man at his tactful best, we also find him in moments of despair, such as when he confides to a friend, “I hate the world. I hate myself,” and in times of frustration as he lashes out at most members of Congress as “mortal enemies to talent” who have “only contempt for integrity.” We see Hamilton engaging in vitriolic and mudslinging exchanges with other politicians, and, yes, even committing adultery. (A perceptive Martha Washington once noticed an amorous tomcat and named it Hamilton.) Above all, Randall skillfully traces Hamilton’s untiring efforts to establish a financial system based on a currency that has become the most trusted medium in the world and is still graced by his portrait. A retired newsman, Alan Prince lectures at the University of Miami.

In her consistently enlightening new book, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850, award-winning historian Linda Colley examines the limitations and vulnerabilities of the British Empire during its most wide-ranging period. In 1820, one out of every five human beings on earth was under English rule a formidable fact to consider. Yet Colley proposes that because of its small size, and its dependence on maritime power and the land and resources of other people, “Britain’s empire was always overstretched, often superficial, and likely to be limited in duration.” In Colley’s view, unless we understand the phenomenon of the captivity of British subjects by enemies of that imperial power, we cannot properly appreciate or assess Britain’s overseas experience. By focusing on captivity narratives from the early 17th century to the Victorian era, Colley demonstrates the weaknesses of British power during that period. Focusing on narratives from the Mediterranean (primarily North Africa), North America and India, with a short section on Afghanistan, she offers the stories of men and women of diverse ethnic backgrounds as a means of increasing our understanding of the captivity experience. Her book offers an illuminating re-examination of the colonial experience, the repercussions of which are still being felt today. Almost without exception, Colley demonstrates, individuals became captives because they were not part of the aristocracy, and the government was powerless or indifferent when it came to offering help. It’s interesting to note that when paying ransom to obtain a captive’s release was an option, the government did not play a primary role, but churches in England often did. Colley’s discussions of each of the narratives is engrossing. We see how individuals learned to adapt to changing circumstances, often with the objective of personal survival. Although the narratives often mix insightful reportage with religious, political and historical prejudice, they remain valuable testaments to the relationship between the oppressor and oppressed, despite their shortcomings as historical truth. This is an insightful and stimulating book that presents history with a fresh perspective. Roger Bishop is a frequent contributor to BookPage.

At least 23 of the 118 sailors who died aboard the Kursk survived the internal explosions that sent the nuclear submarine to the bottom of Arctic waters in August 2000. That was confirmed by the contents of a note found on one of the bodies. What we don’t know is whether or not the Russian regime preferred these men dead. That’s the main question addressed by author Robert Moore in A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy. With cool dispassion, Moore dissects every element of the nightmare both inside and outside the stricken vessel that gripped the world for nine agonizing days. And in the process, he demonstrates that the Russian government’s Communist mentality and its military culture have survived the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Twice the size of a jumbo jet and longer than two football fields, the Kursk provided a clear example of the sea adage that a submarine has room for everything except a mistake. Moore examines what the international community has deemed errors, among which were a 48-hour cover-up, falsified reports blaming the West, the impoverished Russian Navy’s failure to maintain adequate rescue equipment, and the government’s reluctance to ask for outside assistance. All these factors contribute to the notion that the Kremlin in Moscow, where a tram driver is paid as much as a nuclear submarine commander, valued machines more than men.

Combining forensic evidence with the laws of physics, Moore masterfully re-creates the doomed sailors’ final hours. And, thanks to a tape recorder hidden under the coat of a journalist, we are able to eavesdrop on a raucous meeting unthinkable in the old Russia between the outraged families of the dead sailors and President Vladimir Putin, who was still on vacation in the sunny Crimea five days after the accident. As Moore, chief U.S. correspondent for the British news agency ITN, skillfully reconstructs the hour-by-hour sequence leading to the divers’ excruciating approach to the sunken submarine, readers might find themselves ignoring what they already know about the outcome and hoping against hope that some of the trapped sailors will be found alive. Alan Prince of Deerfield Beach, Florida, lectures at the University of Miami.

<B>An unlikely figure in Japan’s history</B> Giles Milton, author of <I>Nathaniel’s Nutmeg</I>, returns to the perils and adventures of the 17th-century Pacific Rim in <B>Samurai William</B>. With a novelist’s eye, Milton illuminates a little-known but utterly remarkable period during which the fiercely insular Japanese shogunate opened its doors to the West, thanks mostly to the pluck and perseverance of an unlikely Englishman named William Adams. At the end of a disastrous Dutch expedition seeking a westward route to Asia, Adams’ dilapidated and undermanned ship drifted helplessly into Japanese waters in April of 1600. Adams and his crew were not the first Westerners to reach the Japanese coast Portuguese missionaries had begun to trickle in more than half a century before but they would be the most influential during Japan’s brief dalliance with the West.

Forbidden to return to his native Britain, Adams made the best of his situation, learning the Japanese language and customs, befriending the Japanese shogun and, as Britain and the Netherlands began to establish tentative toeholds of commerce on Japanese soil, becoming a <I>de facto</I> minister of European affairs. It was harrowing, often dangerous work: Japan was fraught with civil wars, and political, commercial and religious tensions frequently boiled over into violence among the Europeans. Shortly after Adams’ death, the Europeans were expelled from Japan, and the island nation again receded into isolation. Two centuries would pass before Japan restored contact with the West. Although almost nothing of the European sojourn had survived the wars and weather of the intervening generations, the memory of the man the Japanese called Anjin Sama, or Mr. Pilot, had been preserved in the name of Tokyo’s Anjincho district. Not only a unique figure in European history, William Adams had also earned his place in the annals of Japan. Adams’ story inspired James Clavell’s fictional <I>Shogun</I>, but the actual events of his life make as worthy a tale as any novel. Milton evokes with equal skill the gritty quays of London, the soupy tropical shores of equatorial Africa and the exquisite palace of Osaka. He has written an adventure tale that will appeal to both the armchair historian as well as the armchair explorer. <I>Elizabeth Entman writes from Manhattan.</I>