Customer Reviews (1)

Great book! Why isn't anyone printing it?
I borrowed this book from some relatives and thoroughly enjoyed it. But when I tried to buy a copy for myself, I found it to be out of print.
Given George Patterson's scathing criticism of all sorts of vested interestes and traditions in his autobiography, a reader could easily come up with conspiracy theories about why certain interests would want the book to stay out of print. Patterson's dramatic encounter with God--he hears God speaking to him--might even make some Christians uncomfortable. Indeed, he criticises everything from the US government to British, Indian, and Chinese governments to drug cartels and entrenched medical monopolies, and traditional churches. Yet his passion for the freedom of Tibet, for helping the poor, for finding a cure to drug addictions, and his unflinching rebuke of wrongdoing even in his own life, give the reader a refreshing view of the world. Unlike so many in our world who only criticise and never offer solutions, Patterson shares the solution that has found him--God.
Patterson's globe-trotting, century-spanning narrative that reaches from poverty to stardom and includes ample references and citations from the canon of western literature reminds me of another favorite author--Salman Rushdie. However, unlike Rushdie's work, Patterson's is a true story. When life supersedes art in beauty, adventure, and meaning, I must but cry.
I ask whomever has the right to publish this book: Please print it, so we can read it. ... Read more

Product Description
On March 10, 2008, a series of demonstrations began in Lhasa and other Tibetan regions of China to mark the 49th anniversary of an unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. The demonstrations appeared to begin peacefully with small groups that were then contained by security forces. Both the protests and the response of the PRC authorities escalated in the ensuing days, spreading from the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) into parts of Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai Provinces with Tibetan populations. By March 14, 2008, mobs of angry people were burning and looting establishments in downtown Lhasa. Authorities of the People's Republic of China (PRC) responded by sealing off Tibet and moving in large-scale security forces. Beijing has defended its actions as appropriate and necessary to restore civil order and prevent further violence. Still, China's response has resulted in renewed calls for boycotts of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on August 8, 2008, and for China to hold talks with the Dalai Lama.China sees itself as having provided Tibet with extensive economic assistance and development using money from central government coffers, and PRC officials often seem perplexed at the simmering anger many Tibetans nevertheless retain against them. Despite the economic development, Tibetans charge that the PRC interferes with Tibetan culture and religion. They cite as examples: Beijing's interference in 1995 in the choice of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second highestranking personage; enactment of a 'reincarnation law' in 2007 requiring Buddhist monks who wish to reincarnate to obtain prior approval from Beijing; and China's policy of conducting 'patriotic education' campaigns, as well as efforts to foster atheism, among the Tibetan religious community. The PRC defends the campaigns as a tool to help monks become loyal, law-abiding citizens of China. Controversy over the role of the Dalai Lama and the impact of PRC control on Tibet's language, culture, and religion have prompted recurring actions by Congress in support of Tibet's traditions - actions routinely denounced by Beijing. ... Read more

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background on each of the Dali Lamas since the 15th Century, also reviews the history of the institution, importance for Tibetan Buddhism ... Read more

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Discover the charm and mysterious splendor of Tibet—a land that will haunt you with its spectacular and breathtaking scenery.

Appropriately called “The Roof of the World,” Tibet is on a vast plateau covering more than 463,323 square miles in southwest China. It sits three miles above sea level and beckons you to hear its music, view its ancient architecture, and experience its unique culture. Through the stunning photographs of Sun Chengyi’s 19-year quest to capture Tibet’s awesome landscapes, you can sit back and travel to places beyond your wildest dreams. Tibet has become an ideal destination for climbers, adventurers, and tourists from all over the world. This collection of photography showcases the enthralling year- round snow, majestic mountains, mysterious religions, and exotic customs of its inhabitants. ... Read more

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Now considered a classic, this is an eloquent and compellingly told account of the Dalai Lama's exile from Tibet after its conquest by China. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

if you believe people are born to a class structure including untouchables then Dali Lama is their leader
This is typical anti Chinese publication that is spread in the west.
There is absolutely no discussion that is not 100% biased against the Chinese.
If you believe that people is born to a class structure that you cannot escape then you should believe this book.
The old India, Tibetan and the old Chinese (also old western) believe that you are born an untouchable you should be content to be an untouchable and be treated as equal to a stray animal. Slaves are higher classes then the untouchables who has to wear a bell on their ankles to warn people that they are coming and please do not let them have a chance to touch you which will be a death sentence for the untouchables. The Holy Man is the highest class of people (Dalia Lama, Priest etc) then the noble class like the Kings and then the educated and thousands of levels.
Life is great if you are at the top of the class structure like the Lama or even the noble class but impossible for the vast majority.The only sad part is that religion is what teaches those lower class people to be content because you are born to be at the bottom and your hope is to be content in this life and be born again in your next life to have a higher class.
Chinese and China as a country have overcome this believe (at least 99%) while in Tibet and India this is still a big problem. I have just visited India and found out firsthand how bad the situation is. In the two most important cities Bombay (the economical center of India where 40% of taxes of India are collected) and New Dali, the untouchables are all over the cities and basically live on the street. The tour guide told us about 1/3 of Indians are untouchables but I am not sure that is an accurate number. There is a difference between the untouchables and the poor people in other parts of the world.Poor people in other parts of the world have a chance of escaping from their poor state or may be their children or grand children. Their chances are slim but at least possible. The untouchables have no chance because the system says you are born an untouchable and you and all your decedents are untouchables forever.
If you think that is great then Dali Lama is who you should support. If you think the untouchables and other lower class people are born equal to you and me and should have an equal chance then Dali Lama is an evil person who oppresses people using religion.
Next time when someone who tells you how great Dali Lama is ask them how come he never talk about the untouchables who are everywhere he went.

A Moving Tale of Exile
John Avedon's book is about half devoted to the Dalai Lama himself, and the other half to other persons exiled from Tibet, as well as the story of Tibet's traumatic occupation by Communist Chinese.This book should not disappoint you, even if you were expecting a more biographical account of the Dalai Lama.Avedon tells a very moving story of exile, political oppression, and conflict.The brutality under Mao's occupation is as unimaginable as the justification for invasion was absurd.Those wishing primarily to understand the situation of the Tibetan occupation and exile, and also how the Dalai Lama fits into this context, should read this book.You will learn in vivid detail what the Tibetan people have experienced.Avedon's style is not academic, but very readable.I highly recommend the book.

Essential history from a human perspective
I bought my hardback copy in 1985, and have re-read parts of it many times since.

It may be easy for both of the involved parties to react with nationalistic fervour and outrage, but this book is about the real personal history of humble and peacful people. It is a warning to all who live in the comfort we take for granted, that it is possible to lose everything, and have the rest of the World turn away.

The book covers the historical facts in a straight forward and detailed manner. It also covers the legal questions arising from the occupation with expert opinions from international jurors.

Avedon can't help showing compassion for the subjects of his account, he is only human. It is this very humanity that makes the book so readable and genuine. It does not condemn the wonderful people of China, but exposes the reality of life under a compassionless regime. This book is a reminder that tyranny is not such a remote concept, but the experience of millions.

Chinese invasion of Tibet and Tibetan diaspora, one of the best books
Probably this book has not been read in recent times as much as it was before. The reason is that it practically stops at 1985 with a small attempt of updating to 1997. For an historical essay that relies greatly on updated information on a dramatic world situation such as that of Tibet and that still has written on the cover "the definitive account of the Dalai Lama and Tibet since the Chinese conquest" this is a major drawback. However, John Avedon's 500-page book has really represented a milestone for the awareness of the West on Tibetan reality and the crimes and genocide carried out by the Chinese. In the 1980's it was the most read book on Tibet and practically the only updated, precise, journalistic source of all information. If anyone remembers Bertolucci's "Little Buddha" on the airplane to India the boy's father is reading this book! Having been such a great bestseller it is natural that it has slightly passed out of fashion. But this takes nothing away from its value. If you want a readable, engrossing, historical narration of the last years of Tibet's freedom, to the 1955-59 Chinese invasion and especially of what happened from 1959 to 1985 to the refugees in India and to the prisoners in Chinese jails, up to the apparent "normalization" of the 1980's and the visits of the Tibetan delegations to their native land, this book remains the best document around.
One of the main narrative themes is how Tibetans and the Dalai Lama managed to maintain their cultural and religious heritage and only regarding to this aspect there is a wave of optimism running through the book.

John Avedon had a personal relationship with the Dalai Lama and was also interested in Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan culture, so the first journalistic part of the book, mostly built up out of life experiences of eminent Tibetans who survived the genocide, is followed by brief essays on Tibetan medicine, the report of a pilgrimage to Buddha's sites in India by the Dalai Lama, and a personal interview with HH on the philosophy of Buddhism, its outlook on death, life and personal experience. This last part is interesting, but it is detached from the principal narration and it seems introduced only to lengthen the book or to cram into it all the Author's knowledge. The notes and the bibliography are excellent even though dated.

A must read for those interested in modern Tibet, but it would be more honest to subtitle the re-editions "Tibet from the Chinese conquest to the 1990's".

I am looking for a book that tells what has been happening in the last 10-15 years. Have any suggestions?

Not easy to take
If your serious about learning about Tibet and the Chinese take- over read this book.Some of the more explicit chapters made me really angry and kept me questioning "How can humans treat each other this way"? ... Read more

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From the author of Kundun, a powerful work that reveals the true horrors behind China's "liberation" of Tibet.

Since 1959, when China claimed power over this tiny mountain nation, more than one million Tibetans are believed to have perished by starvation, execution, imprisonment, and abortive uprisings. Many thousands more, including their spiritual and political leader, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, have been driven into exile.

The country has been systematically colonized, so that indigenous inhabitants are now a second-class minority. Not only are Tibetans being squeezed out by Chinese settlers, but there are reports of Tibetan women being forcibly sterilized and of healthy full-term babies being killed at birth. Thousands of Tibetans languish in prison and suffer appalling torture. Rich mineral resources have been plundered and the delicate ecosystem devastated. Buddhism, the life blood of Tibet, has been ruthlessly suppressed.

Mary Craig tells the story of Tibet with candor and power. Based upon extensive research and interviews with large numbers of refugees now living in exile in India, this book presents four decades of religious persecution, environmental devastation, and human atrocities that have caused Tibetans to weep "tears of blood." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

If you do know a good bit about the struggle and even if you don't
This book is great and by great, I mean that it's very well-written, loaded with info and gives human voices and faces to the struggle from Tibetans of all classes. It's not easy to read due to the injustices but the writer has made it easy for anyone to comprehend. I have previously known a bit of the struggle from some research, documentaries, etc. I still found a great deal of information in the book. Again, a person need not be well-versed on the subject due to the east of the writing.

It DOES put a very human face to the struggle and, should you choose to read this book, you will feel the injustice of this and the frustration with everyone's going along with China and making Tibet stand alone against such a tide of blood.

A bit depressing
This book was a bit depressing - there is no doubt that what the Chinese did in Tibet was horrendous . . . and depressing.But this book doesn't stop -- its just one horrible thing after another . . . I thought Patrick French's Tibet Tibet gave a better overall feel and balance for what has happened in Tibet over the last 50 years.

WOW, what sadness.
I never heard of the term "thamzing", but this book is full of primary sources or accounts of public torture and Chinese communist lies. I cried several times reading this book due to the horrible accounts. There is a real cry, by many of the tortured... why do so many people not believe them?

Progress, by no means is worth any human loss of life.

balanced, thoughtful approach to tibet
Genocide. Ecocide. ugly words, but far worse is the actual doing of these atrocities. the book is passionate without being preachy, balanced in trying to stick to the facts without over dramatizing them. its is well written and easily read, convincing and deeply saddening. a must read for anyone desirous of knowing what is going on on The Roof of the World.

realpolitik versus the faith of the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet. chinese communist with the millenium old chinese racism and serious blindness to all things not-chinese versus poor, buddhist, hill people. Tibet is loosing and may already have lost.

One thing missing from the book is an impassioned and reasonable plead of why the West, European and American people should give a damn about what happens in such a remote, poor, unimportant part of the world. her argument stems only from a call to justice and a call to the unity of humanity. and this is relatively unspoken. it is assumed in her passion for the people and Tibet and justice for there case.

Give me a minute to argue the Tibetan case.
1- you buy Chinese goods, these effectively support the government and allow the rape of this poor country and its people
2-there is a unity of humanity. we in the west are detribalized and owe little loyalty between the level of our families and the national governments.
3-the connectedness of all is real. for instance. ship the tibetan forests to china, silt load in the major rivers in India will be enormously increased. the destruction and flooding there will kill millions and destroy the wealth of another poor nation. this will have great effect on the military and political situation in this volitile region.
4-in is an example of the nature of chinese, communist, secular, expansionist, imperialist power at it rawist, most destructive, murderous.
5-the tibetan people through the Dalai Lama partly, but through their faith have much to teach the world, and they are doing so in actions, with their bodies and lives in a way that shames the materialist West. a very important lesson about what is really important in life.

but after all of this.
justice freedom faith
are more than words. they are deeds.

and this book will help you understand why some people are killing other people in Tibet. today. tomorrow.

Exceptional book with endless information on Tibet's losses.
I knew VERY LITTLE about what happened to Tibet and the Dalai Lama, until this book.It's a very good read....Please consider buying it and learning about the abuse of human rights in other parts of the world. ... Read more

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This work puts Tibet in its historical, cultural and geographic perspective and goes on to examine various options that can break the Tibetan deadlock. A scholarly work with several documents appended. ... Read more

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By the middle of the 19th century the English were beginning to enjoy the fruits of their colonial empire. Military strategy and the political considerations along with pressure from their intelligentsia, forced the english authorities to collect information. ... Read more

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This bibliography, over ten years in the making and numbering over seven hundred items, attempts to provide for the first time a comprehensive listing in chronological sequence of Tibetan-language works belonging to the typical historical genres that have evolved between the 11th century and the present. Included are not only the dates and details of composition or publication, authorship and title, but also references to the burgeoning secondary literature in other languages. ... Read more

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Shangri-la. An arcadia hidden in a remote, secluded valley. A vast, wind-swept plain cradled among the far away peaks of the Orient. Tibet. Beginning almost as a mere rumor in the mid-eighteenth century, Tibet evolved over the next century of industrialization into one of the last great sacred places of Victorian romanticism, taking on much of the mystery, power, and ambiguity of more traditionally experienced sacred spaces. In this masterful study, Peter Bishop examines Western travel writings on Tibet to trace the creation, fulfillment, and decline of the landscape of this fantastic place.Bishop shows that travel does not discover worlds, but rather constructs them. He takes the Jungian stance that each Tibet has been the creation of the unconscious at work in the representatives of an era, imaginative practices coming to be understood as truth, truth subject to repeated revision. Each generation of writers reveals preoccupations, unfulfilled wishes, fears, and hopes as the unconscious is made conscious by its projection onto Tibet. By following the trail left by Western missionaries, soldiers, diplomats, mystics, traders, adventurers, and poets, Bishop uncovers the deep structure of the European imagination and plots its transformation in the making of the Tibetan myth.The Myth of Shangri-la is not so concerned with the historical details of the exploration and development of Tibet as with the phenomenology of the imagination, the way Tibet was experienced and imagined in the Western world order. Bishop looks at where travellers were coming from more than where they were going, and in doing so he delineates the complex relationship among cultural imagination, physical landscape, and the sense of the sacred. His rich narrative and sustained recourse to diaries, letters, histories, and works of fiction make this a fascinating book that will be of interest to anyone interested in European cultural history and in the powers of the imagination. ... Read more

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The journey that the author A.H Franke, a member of the Moravian Misson, undertook in 1909 was on the behest of the British Indian Government for carrying out an archaeological survey of the districts that comprised of Indian Tibet (now the regions of Lahul and Spiti in state of Himachal Pradesh, and Ladakh in the state of Jammu and Kashmir). These areas had never been explored and Franke was best suited for this purpose, given his knowledge of local history and antiquities and fluency in the Tibetan language. Starting from Shimla on the 14th of June 1909 he traveled upto the Satluj Valley through the hill state of Rampur Bashahr he reached Spiti.Crossing the Parungla pass he continued through Rubshu and the Tso Moriri Lake in South Eastern Ladakh and then to Leh, the capital of Ladakh. After a brief stay at Leh he crossed the Zoji pass to reach Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. The second volumes give the Tibetan text and English translation of the chronicles of Zangskar, Baltistan, Lahul along with the genealogies of the chiefs of these areas. It contains rare maps of the lahul, spiti, rubshu, kinnaur areas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

On the footprints ofRev. August Hermann Francke
I trekked on author's step on 2003 from Spiti to Ladakh. Francke'spersonal narrative was first published in 1914 and is an archaeological survey of the districts which once formed the kingdom of Western Tibet.
These mountainous regions, then belonging to the Indian Empire, and therefore indicated as Indian Tibet had never been explored by any scholar combining a knowledge of local history and antiquities with a thorough acquaintance of Tibetan. The author Dr. Franck acquired these rare accomplishments in the course of his many years in in Ladakh and Lahul.
Starting from Simla on the 14th June, 1909, he traveled up to Satluj Valley through the hill-state of Rampur-Bashahr, and crossing through Pharang Pass, and mountain passes the Phologongkha Pass and the Thagland Pass reached Ladakh, the real center of the ancient realm of Western Tibet. After a brief stay at Leh, the ancient seat of the Gyal-Po rulers of that country, Dr. Francke traveled westwards and after crossing the Photho La, Namika Pass, and the Zoji La, reached Srinagar on the 16th of October.
This journal of his four months travel bear ample evidence of the spirit of the explorer who was animated by the true enthusiasm of the scholar. This journal made very important additions to our knowledge of the archaeology and history of Indian Tibet. ... Read more

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These five magnificent volumes introduce the history andculture of Tibet from the Paleolithic Age to the 1940s through over700 precious cultural relics. It is divided chronologically into fivevolumes, covering arts, architecture, cultures, politics, militaryaffairs, religions, science, technology, trade and business,transportation, social life, etc. Each volume has many special topicswith a brief essay that provides information about important eventsand cultural features in the related period.

Most of the objects in these five volumes are rarely known and arepublished here for the first time. They belong the monasteries andinstitutions in Tibet, and include a wide range of materials:paintings (both Thangkas and wall paintings), sculptures, manuscripts,excavated relics, and ritual objects. Superbly photographed, eachobject is fully described.

Volume 1 Prehistoric Age and Tubo Period ranges from stone tools of50,000 years ago to the sculptures, paintings, and musical instrumentsof the mid-ninth century. Volume 2 The Period of Separatist Regimescovers mid-ninth to thirteenth century. It highlights surviving wallpaintings, sculptures and artifacts from ruined temples. Volume 3 YuanDynasty and Ming Dynasty (1206-1644 AD) see increasing Chineseinfluence and Volume 4 Qing Dynasty presents historical relics betweenTibet and the Qing court. Volume 5 Qing Dynasty and the Republic ofChina includes various minor arts and historical documents. ... Read more

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Much writing about Tibet and especially on Tibetan responses to Chinese communist rule has been sentimental and highly polemical. Also, many publications on recent development have been based on travellers' accounts. This volume adopts a more balanced and rigorous analytical approach to modern Tibetan society. Questions of identity and ethnicity in Tibet and the character and course of the anti-Chinese protests since 1987 are principal themes. Earlier history, ideology, economic development and China's post-1980 reforms are also examined. ... Read more