Cambodia

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Loung Ung (2000). See Cambodia through a child's eyes during Pol Pot's regime in the late 1970s. Now the spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World, Ung proves with this memoir how a country's beauty can still shine through the darkness of war.

*Off the Rails in Phnom Penh: Into the Dark Heart of Guns, Girls, and Ganja, by Amit Gilboa (1998). Tired of gentility? Gilboa is. "Cambodia is a place where the usual restraints on behavior—legal, financial, social—are noticeably absent," he writes. Israel-born Gilboa's account of expat humanitarian relief workers living badly ($2 brothels, marijuana pizzas, etc.) makes for zesty reading.