Many of the essays in Part I seem like they try to fit too much material into too few pages, the result being that the oversimplification gives the essays a quality that reminds me of middle school textbooks. I got the book hoping to learn things about Tibetan culture other than Buddhist-related things, and while I did get a glimmer of such things, such as a snapshot of the life of a Tibetan town-dweller, I would have liked if the book were about 3 or 4 times as large and went into much more detail about each topic it covered.
I really enjoyed the essays by Anne Klein and Robert Thurman.
I didn't read Part II, the subjective experiences of the authors while in Tibet, as I wasn't really interested in reading about that.