■"Cambodia's Murderous Mystery Man [book review]," by William Grimes, New York Times, 18 February 2005, p. B33.

The book is Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, by Philip Short. A bio of the man who led the killing of 1.5 million out of a population of only 7 million, or roughly one out of every five people in the country.

Pol Pot was the Taliban of Maoism, or the Trotskyite of Leninism, or the Stalinist of Marxism: he pushed the logic to stunning conclusions.

His revolution was the ultimate expression of socialism's reach-back in time to start over with the right kind of society. His was the vision of the far left gone mad and Occidentalism taken to its utmost extreme:

"Money, law courts, newspapers, the postal system and foreign telecommunications--even the concept of the city--were all simply abolished," Philip Short writes in his superb, authoritative account of the man and the madness that transformed Cambodia, almost overnight, into hell on earth. "Individual rights were not curtailed in favor of the collective, but extinguished altogether. Individual creativity, initiative, originality were condemned per se. Individual consciousness was systematically abolished."

Pol Pol killed his countrymen systematically. It is estimated that Kim Jong Il's famine-induced genocide of the late 1990s killed upwards of two million in North Korea. But his story is far from being told.

One killed actively, the other worked hard to make sure people died for lack of food.

We won't know all the horrific details on Kim until years after his regime is toppled, but someday, you will read his bio for real and it will be just as scary as Pol Pot's.