Sydney Schanberg's Beyond the Killing Fields

Book signing/talk at Barnes & Noble

Manhattan, 17 May 2010

Buoyed by a great meeting with my new publisher here in NYC, I arrived early at the Barnes & Noble on Broadway & 82nd to rows of 150+ empty seats for the book signing and talk of Sydney Schanberg.  By the time the conversation started, over 250 people spilled over onto the floors of this upstairs section of Barnes to listen to Sydney (now in his 70s) reminiscent of the crowd and interest at the "Old Hacks" reunion event at the Himawari Hotel in Phnom Penh earlier this April.  C-Span taped the conversation.

Sydney Schanberg framed by heads of his wife and Ser Moeun, wife of Dith Pran who escaped in April 1975 (Manhattan, 17 May 2010)

Later, as he was signing my book, I was surprised to hear him say passionately that he laments there is no death penalty at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

Theary Seng with Ser Moeun and Mona Kem (Manhattan, 17 May 2010)

I really enjoyed talking with Dith Pran's former wife, Ser Moeun, who reminded me very much of my aunt Ry.

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www.beyondthekillingfields.com

Beyond the Killing Fields — an anthology of major writings on war and its consequences by Sydney Schanberg — spans four decades of work by one of the major war correspondents of the 20th century. This is the first book to include the group of New York Times articles which describe, first-hand, the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975, for which Schanberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting "at great risk." In addition, it includes his signature article "The Death and Life of Dith Pran," on which the Academy Award-winning film, The Killing Fields, was based. The film starred Sam Waterston as Schanberg and the late Haing Ngor as Sydney's Cambodian colleague Dith Pran.

In addition to Cambodia, this anthology includes Schanberg's eye-witness accounts of the bloody Bangladesh struggle for independence from a brutal Pakistani regime which ended when the Indian army invaded to help the Bengali fighters and the Pakistanis surrendered. Also here are dispatches from the front lines in Vietnam during the Communists nearly successful offensive in 1972.

Here, too, is Schanberg's extensive investigation of Vietnam POWS left behind by the Nixon Administration as well as his commentary on the Iraq war; both expose secrets and deceptions by the government.