1959年3月10日，拉薩數萬民眾包圍達賴喇嘛的夏宮羅布林卡，阻止他按照原定計劃前往西藏軍區司令部觀看文藝演出。隨後民眾集會遊行，喊出了要求解放軍撤出西藏，要求西藏獨立的口號。那天在拉薩發生的事，史稱「1959年拉薩事件」。事件導致未滿24歲的西藏政教領袖，時任全國人大常委會副委員長、西藏自治區籌委會主任的第十四世達賴喇嘛丹增嘉措率家人和噶廈政府部分主要官員，於17日深夜離開羅布林卡，經過兩周跋涉，翻越喜馬拉雅山，前往印度尋求政治庇護。
本書是以 細緻入微的研究以及公正的立場揭示「1959年拉薩事件」歷史真相的開創性作品。
On March 10th, 1959, tens of thousands of people surrounded Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama's summer palace in Lhasa, preventing him from attending a prescheduled theater performance at the headquarters of the Tibetan Military Region. Soon afterwards, the people carried out a rally and demonstrations, shouting slogans calling for PLA withdrawal from Tibet and Tibetan independence. The events of that day later became known as the "1959 Lhasa Incident." The incident spurred the not yet twenty four-year-old Tibetan religious leader Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, co-chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, and director of the Tibet Autonomous Region Planning Committee to flee Norbulingka late at night on the 17th. After a two-week journey across the Himalayas, the Dalai Lama, his family members, and some Kashag government officials sought political asylum in India.