I've always liked those National Geographic maps and charts which resemble three ring circuses--several things are going on on each page or in each corner. There are so many things to explore, you feel a sense of discovery while still curled up on your sofa. This small book is like that--loaded with good photographs, a few (perhaps too few) maps, and insets of all kinds. The text is probably on the slight side, but if you read and absorb what the author writes, you will come away with a good grounding in the Khmer empire of the period 800-1400. Always strongly influenced by India, the Khmer civilization came and went, like Pharaonic Egypt, without any ongoing influence in the world today. The Cambodians of our times preserve the architectural heritage of their ancestors, but their culture is different. A reader may find out about the great kings, the organization of their kingdom, and peruse some interesting excerpts from Zhou Daguan, a Chinese traveler of the 13th century; George Coedes, a French scholar of Southeast Asian history, and Bernard Groslier, the last French curator of Angkor and an art historian. There are many other, more scholarly books on the Khmers, Angkor, and Southeast Asian history, but if you want a relatively painless introduction with a lot of basic facts, you should give this one a try. I thought that it was like a kind of pill to be swallowed. After a short time, you know something about Southeast Asia ! However, despite the title, you will discover that neither Angkor nor Cambodia were ever lost. The Europeans didn't know about the temples and palaces in the jungle, but Cambodians did. Another myth crumbles. Oh, well.
