Freeing Tibet: 50 Years of Struggle, Resilience, and Hope is the story of this fifty-year long struggle, from its Cold War beginnings to the present. Starting as a secret CIA operation during the Eisenhower Administration, National Security Directive 5412/2 began U.S.-backing for Tibet’s guerrillas in their fight against China. Freeing Tibet reveals fresh details of this Cold War history, including a secret CIA propaganda campaign and a tragic abandonment of Tibet’s freedom fighters in a Himalayan Bay of Pigs. In an extraordinary shift of patronage, after the Nixon Administration cut off funds for the Tibetans the cause of freeing Tibet was taken up by the sixties counterculture movement. Freeing Tibet chronicles the evolution of the movement for Tibetan freedom from the Beatniks and Hippies to a popular global cause embraced by celebrities, artists, musicians, students, and world leaders.

Timely, impeccably researched, and hopeful, this is the book that will change the way we understand Tibet. Far from being a lost cause, Freeing Tibet shows the way that an engaged global community will save Tibet. The greatest civil rights cause of the 21st century is freedom and democracy not only for Tibetans, but for China’s billion citizens. This is a book for people who want to know history not just to understand the world, but to change the world.