Angkor: Eighth Wonder of the World

For much of the second half of the 20th century Cambodia was racked by war and famine. Considered a sideshow in the Vietnam War, the country was nevertheless invaded by both North and South Vietnam, bombed to smithereens by the United States, and—worst of all—ruled, between 1975 and 1979, by Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Things were so bad that the very name Cambodia became synonymous with pain and suffering. Yet it was not always so. Before its rice fields were stained with blood, Cambodia was celebrated as a land of fertile tranquility where a Buddhist people continued the myriad artistic and cultural traditions of the old Khmer Empire, exemplified by the extraordinary temple of Angkor Wat, surely the Eighth Wonder of the World. Angkor has to be seen to be believed. It is the largest religious site in the world and the major cultural and historical attraction in all of Southeast Asia. 20,000 words, 81 contemporary images, 18 historic images, 7 maps