In 2012, Chickering moved to Phnom Penh with his French wife and two children in 2012 to uncover the story behind FULRO. Painstakingly researched over several decades, his book A WAR OF THEIR OWN is the first full account of how Montagnard ethnonationalism played out against the background of a Cold War confrontation involving Washington, Saigon, Hanoi, and Paris. It also takes the long view, tracing the Montagnards’ spirit back to when they ruled the Highlands unchallenged, never colonized because of the protection afforded them by malaria, and follows it into the slow, gleaming coils of 20th-century history.