On April 17, 1975, an entire nation vanished. On that day, Khmer Rouge troops entered the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh proclaiming "the Year Zero," and within hours began emptying the city of its two and a half million inhabitants. Sydney H. Schanberg, a New York Times correspondent, and his Cambodian assistant, Dith Pran, stayed to witness the city's fall. Schanberg was eventually granted safe conduct across the border, but Pran was forced into the Cambodian countryside, which would become a death camp for millions. His failure to keep Dith Pran safe haunted Schaunberg for more than four years until, in October 1979, Dith Pran crossed the border to Thailand and to freedom. This is the harrowing account of the final days before the fall of Phnom Penh and of life under the Khmer Rouge, seen through the eyes of two men who shared a unique commitment to each other, to Cambodia, and to history.
Sydney Schanberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his New York Times coverage of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. But his reporting on Cambodia is largely known from "The Killing Fields," the Academy Award-winning film starring Sam Waterston as Schanberg, which was based on his New York Times article chronicling the search for his captured Cambodian colleague Dith Pran and Pran's escape to freedom in 1979.
After returning from Asia, Schanberg was named NY Times Metropolitan Editor and then became an Op-Ed columnist, writing about New York City. In 1985, Schanberg left The Times and spent nine years as an Op-Ed columnist for New York Newsday. He then worked as head of investigations for APBNews.com and later wrote award-winning press criticism at The Village Voice.
Beyond the Killing Fields (Potomac Books, March 2010) is his first book -- an anthology of his reporting and commentary about wars in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq.
Please visit the book's website at http://www.beyondthekillingfields.com
