NOVEMBER, 1998 | JOURNALIST BARBARA ERICKSON spent months in the early '90s traveling around Tibet, trying to find out the state of the country's health care, education, environment, agriculture, government and culture. Keeping a low profile, she was able to maintain rare access to a country that is not usually open to examination.

Through the first part of "Tibet: Abode of the Gods, Pearl of the Motherland," as she visits Lhasa and tiny villages, interviews Tibetan and Chinese hotel workers, farmers, and nomads, Erickson remains evenhanded. About the environment, she notes:

"The Chinese are correct in saying that they have brought tractors, cars, roads, irrigation canals, and electric lights to Tibet, but the International Campaign for Tibet and its supporters are also correct in noting that since the Chinese took control, the plateau has suffered great losses... The once-abundant herds of wild yak, antelope, ass, and gazelle have been pushed into the mountains and remotest corners of the plateau. The ancient forests of southern and eastern Tibet are now scarred with barren, clear-cut slopes."

THE DISPASSIONATE ACCOUNT and the recital of facts and statistics give way in final chapters in which she discusses the lack of Tibetan self-determination in government and human rights. Here, her conclusions are as harsh as many critics of Chinese occupation. The Tibetans "cannot speak their minds about religion, their desire for independence, their veneration for the Dalai Lama, their anger at the influx of Han Chinese into their heartland... When the insults to their culture and religion and the oppressive controls become too much for some to bear, the state uses torture, murder, intimidation, and blacklists to force them into silence."

Because so much information about Tibet contains more passion than hard data, this book filled with firsthand accounts, balanced reporting using
information from a variety of sources provides a sound basis for judgment about the extent of the impact of decades of Chinese occupation of Tibet.

ANOTHER RECENT VOLUME contributes a moving personal account that confirms Erickson's evaluation. "The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk" unfolds in the calm years before the Chinese arrival.

In 1952, Palden Gyatso was one of 20 young men ordained as a Buddhist monk in a monastery in Tibet. A few years later, he became one of the many monks imprisoned by the Chinese. Though his captors beat and tortured him as part of their effort to eradicate the country's strong religious culture, he survived 33 years in prison, escaping in 1992. He was the only survivor of his 20 classmates. "Some were to die in prison. Others were beaten to death during the Cultural Revolution," he writes.

After he fled to India, he met the exiled leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama,who urged him to write his story. The Dalai Lama has written an introduction to the book. This modestly told story of a spiritual life caught up in a struggle for survival---for himself and for Tibetans---gives a sense of the magnitude of the tragedy that has befallen an entire population and its culture.