These two beautifully illustrated volumes are the product not only of years of scholarship but also of the many visits and field-research trips the author made over the last twenty-five years. They include over 1,100 illustrations, most of them recent photographs by the author, and many rare and previously unpublished historical photographs, as well as over 100 architectural plans and drawings. Detailed descriptions and interpretations of the buildings, art, and furnishings of all major monasteries and significant secular buildings, as well as numerous references to historical Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese texts and to works of scholarly research in the West and in China, make this work a unique source of information for both the specialist and the general reader.