Across the Tibetan Plateau

Remarkable photographs celebrate the wild places and the exquisite animals of the country called “the roof of the world.” Here is the most comprehensive photography to date of a little-known and seldom-visited land whose area equals western Europe. The beauty and diversity of Tibet is staggering: from Mount Everest to the world’s deepest gorge, from tropical jungles to arctic-like tundra, from trees twenty feet in diameter to vast herds and solitary specimens of some of the least-known animals on the planet. Certain photographs, such as those of a newborn Tibetan antelope or the elusive red ghoral, are among the first ever taken of these subjects. The book brings American, Tibetan, and Chinese scholarship to bear on the natural history of Tibet, and it also describes an extraordinary conservation accomplishment that has gone virtually unnoticed by the outside world. Where else has 40 percent of the land been set aside in nature preserves in twenty years? As a result of this effort, the animals and landscapes shown here will be saved for future generations.