The Chinese Communist government has twice invoked large-scale military might to crush popular uprisings in capital cities. The second incident--the notorious massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989--is well known. The first, thirty years earlier in Tibet, remains little understood today. Yet in wages of destruction, bloodshed, and trampling of human rights, the tragic toll of March 1959 surpassed Tiananmen.

Tibet in Agony provides the first clear historical account of the Chinese crackdown in Lhasa. Sifting facts from the distortions of propaganda and partisan politics, Jianglin...