Palden Gyatso was born in a Tibetan village in 1933 and became an ordained Buddhist monk at eighteen -- just as Tibet was in the midst of political upheaval. When Communist China invaded Tibet in 1950, it embarked on a program of land reform and "thought reform" that would eventually affect all of Tibet's citizens and nearly destroy its ancient culture. In 1967, the Chinese razed monasteries across Tibet and forced thousands of monks into labor camps and prisons. Gyatso spent the next twenty-five years of his life enduring interrogation and torture simply because of the strength of his beliefs. Palden Gyatso's story bears witness to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the strength of Tibet's proud civilization, faced with cultural genocide.