Buddha's Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Communist Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet

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Summary: Finally! The story is told, and told well.
Review: "Buddha's Warriors" is a story that needed desperately to be told -- what it took to turn thousands of non-violent Tibetan Buddhists into an armed rebellion, and how the CIA left them high and dry -- and Dunham tells it with expertise and flair. Somehow he has gathered an incredible roster of primary sources (including American insiders), and he wields them like a knife against the history of Chinese oppression and U.S. cowardice.
Dunham has a knack for pulling together the pieces of this somewhat obscure tale -- just try to find it in history books -- and making it coherent, exciting.
Few people seem to know how China's invasion drove so many dedicated pacifists to violent means. Even the Dalai Lama, who for so long has refused even to acknowledge violence as a viable method, gives these Khampa warriors their due respect in the book's foreward. That's quite something.
Dunham has done a great service to written history by publishing this book. But it's not hard work to read, like so many histories these days. Those who do not follow Tibet's latest struggle will surely enjoy it all the same, and those who regard the struggle with a certain degree of frustration and disbelief ("how can they not fight?!") will be infused with a good healthy dose of vindication and righteous anger.
Happy reading.


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Summary: The story finally told, and told well.
Review: Buddha's Warriors is an important book. It's also compelling, not to mention extremely well researched and well written. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Tibet, both historically and in the context of its present suffering. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Tibetan Buddhism, as it clarifies alot of misunderstanding about Buddhism as a "passive" culture or philosophy. This is a story that may be known, but not widely, and it needed to be told.
Mikel Dunham has spent years compiling a wealth of information as material for this book, and this research was largely gleaned from extraordinary interviews with individuals who needed to trust the author long before they would speak with him, let alone give him their stories. Long before this story was written, Dunham obviously became extremely close to his subject, and that intimacy, both with the people and the story, raises the quality far beyond a traditional academic treatise. You will feel that on every page. Buy it. Don't leave it on your coffee table. Read it.

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Summary: Beautifully written work of journalism
Review: China has, for decades, been trying to get the world to believe hat the Tibetans bowed down before the Chinese invaders in the 1950's and were gratefully "repatriated" to the motherland. Not so. Mikel Dunham showed me, in amazing prose and impeccable scholarship and journalism, that the Tibetans were fighters, even those Buddhist monks among their ranks. All the people Dunham profiled came alive for me, including the hard-ass CIA agents who trained some of the Tibetan resistance fighters. The book is also chock full of photographs and documents and has maps, along with some incredibly beautiful Tibetan artwork. Definitely a worthy addition to any personal library.

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Summary: Warrior Tribes of Tibet
Review: Dunham is our guide to this far-flung place known as Tibet and the story of the CIA backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters who rose up against the Chinese to protect this precious nation. It reads like a suspense novel taking the reader on an unsettling and beautiful trip through the last sixty years. I couldn't put the book down and want to share it with all my friends. Dunham begins the book asking the question of who these brave men were who helped the Dalai Lama escape Tibet and the persecution of the Chinese. The reader has the pleasure of learning the answer to this question and more on an oddly beautiful journey into men's hearts & souls.

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Summary: Simply wonderful.
Review: I no longer enjoy reading.
I've read this book three times.
Whatever your politics or taste in literature, it's the sort of thing you can't wait to share with your friends.
A very, very good book.

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Summary: On the Trail of the Khampa Legend
Review: This is a gripping tale told in highly readable, suspenseful prose that takes you into the hearts and minds of the Khampa warriors and their CIA trainers as they defend their homeland--sadly, unsuccessfully--from Chinese incursion. This true
story of Tibet is painted over the broad canvas of the Himalayas, bringing to life the history, people, and terrain of this sacred and mysterious part of the world.