Images of Tibet in the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Monica Esposito, is a major collection of twenty-five essays in more than 800 pages on the varied images of Tibet in Europe, North America, and Asia from the seventeenth to the early twenty-first century (despite the title's more limited chronological claim). “Image” here has a number of more or less distinct connotations, though most essays treat either popular constructions and appropriations of motifs having to do with Tibet or national academic traditions of the study of Tibet, and most treat “Tibet” not as a natural but as a constructed and contested category with rhetorical and political force. Editor Monica Esposito styles the book as “the first attempt to explore various manifestations of the images of Tibet from a more global point of view, one that includes religious, aesthetic, and intellectual-historical dimensions” (p. xiii), a characterization that is generally, if not specifically, correct. (One thinks, for instance—to push the boundaries of the genre—of Gendün Chöpel's comments on Tibetan culture and science in his sprawling memoir, the Golden Plain, in which he, one might say, “looks back at Tibet,” or the Tibetan geographic works by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Amdo writers such Sumpa Khenpo, who put the quotes around “Tibet” through efforts in comparative geography and cultural studies.) The contributions are at once engaging and fresh, covering new ground with careful, well-placed steps. Each of the twenty-seven authors (two essays are co-authored) deserves credit for his or her contribution: Urs App, Patricia Berger, Ester Bianchi, Chen Bing, Chen Qingying, Elena De Rossi Filibeck, Isrun Engelhardt, Monica Esposito, Fukuda Yōichi, Matthew T. Kapstein, Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz, Erberto Lo Bue, Donald S. Lopez Jr., Luo Tongbing, Lionel Obadia, Okuyama Naoji, Sabina Ragaini, Shen Weirong, Henry C. H. Shiu, Onoda Shunzō, Antonio Terrone, Gray Tuttle, Hartmut Walravens, Wang Liping, Wang Xiangyun, Françoise Wang-Toutain, and Yao Lixiang.

The two volumes are divided into five sections of unequal length: “The West” (193 pages), “Japan” (59 pages), “China I” and “China II” (414 pages), and “Tibet” (128 pages). Each contains essays on images of Tibet from these particular regions. “The West” contains six essays, each of which views a distinct subject through a distinct level of magnification: perceptions of Tibet in Germany treated through a study of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, as well as the myth of Nazis in Tibet. Another essay surveys early or perhaps proto-Tibetology in Europe and its legacies (particularly in France), while two others offer historical overviews of Tibetan studies in Europe and America up to the early twentieth century. “Japan” is the smallest section, with three essays. Two of these treat interest in Tibet during the Meiji era, while the third treats the philosophical response to Tibetan Buddhism.

Constituting more than half the book, “China I” and “China II” straddle Images of Tibet's two volumes with ten essays, most of which treat adaptations of Tibetan Buddhist traditions in Chinese cultural regions. The first essay offers a literary history of “Tibet” in China stretching back to the thirteenth century as a preface to Ma Jian's controversial 1987 book of short fiction, Stick Out Your Tongue. The second essay argues that Tibet was viewed by some Chinese Buddhists and politicians as a source of messianic teachings to save Republican China, while the following treats Tibetan Buddhist Tantric imagery in protector temples of late imperial and Republican China. Other essays treat the influence of Tibet in twentieth-century Chinese Buddhist historiography, and the interest and controversy surrounding Tantric forms of Tibetan Buddhist tradition in China. Two essays survey the growth of interest in Tibetan Buddhism in Hong Kong and Taiwan during the mid- to late twentieth century, while the section's final essays offer a succinct survey of modern Tibetan studies in China by two eminent Chinese Tibetologists.

“Tibet,” the final and most varied section, offers six essays on, it might be said, Tibetan perceptions of “Tibet.” The first essay briefly surveys Tibetan visual aesthetics and the reception of Tibetan art in Europe. The following essay reverses the overall gaze of the book by studying Tibetan perceptions of Mongols. The next three essays offer case studies of Tibetan efforts to promote, revitalize, and reform Tibetan Buddhism in the context of modern China, dealing with portraits of the Panchen Lamas, revelation in contemporary Kham, and reincarnate masters in, again, Kham, respectively. A final essay explores the notion of a “Tibetan Tibetology.” The volumes incorporate fifty-three images, including photographs, documents, art of various sorts, and a map. Unlike many collections of essays, Images of Tibet contains an extensive index of proper names (encompassing forty pages), which in itself will serve as a useful research aid.

Images of Tibet is notable for several reasons. First, in terms of its authors, it is international in scope, and it is one of only a handful of volumes in which writings by Chinese scholars appear in English alongside their European and American colleagues. This fact is to be lauded, and it should certainly encourage the inclusion of Tibetan scholars' works alongside studies by their Chinese colleagues in such volumes in the future. (As Esposito notes on pp. xviii–xix, “Without any doubt the Tibet section should have included contributions by ethic Tibetans who, as ‘men on the spot,’ could have reflected on their own self-image; but the present situation in the PRC has not allowed the realization of such a project. We cannot but hope that this new century may fulfill this expectation.”) Second, the scholarship represented here is, at its best, both philologically adept and theoretically sophisticated, utilizing sources in multiple languages and addressing current issues that cut across a number of disciplines. Finally, Images of Tibet continues the ever-important project of scrutinizing the primary object of discourse within international scholarly, cultural, and political spheres—namely, “Tibet”—while more than once relating this to Tibet and Tibetans. Like any collection of essays, these volumes contain some essays that will become long-read important theoretical statements, historical overviews, or provocative viewpoints in a particular subfield, while others will receive less sustained attention. Considered as a whole—and this book deserves to be appreciated as such—Esposito's Images of Tibet will serve as a major resource for some time come, and should become a regular conversation partner in ongoing efforts to communally understand ourselves understanding Tibet.