'A History of Western Tibet' is based on foreign and western Tibetan sources of information. The readers will find this work interesting which is the outcome of scholarly enterprise and research as much as of familiarity with the country and the people. The book is profusely illustrated, and illustrations and maps vis-a-vis the text make the readers move apace with the different phases of the history of the Western Tibet.

This is a short and very informative work on the history of western Tibet including Ladakh. The book has 15 chapters that cover:
- the Greek and Roman authors on the nations of Western Tibet;
- the mission of the Mons to western Tibet;
- the migration of the Dards;
- the Chinese records of western Tibet (640-760 AD);
- the time of the Tibeto-dard Kingdoms (500-1000 AD);
- the inauguration of the central Tibetan dynasty and its first kings (900-1400 A.D);
- the days of Tsongkapa and the fall of the first dynasty (1400-1580);
- the time of the Baltiwars (1560-1640);
- the great Mongol war (1646-1647);
- the quarrel for the succession (1680-1780);
- the last two kings (1780-1843);
- the fall of the western Tibetan empire (1834-1840);
- the conquest of Baltistan (1841);
- the war against central Tibet (1841-42).
The book ends with 2 appendices that note
- Rinchana Bhotis career;
- the Ancient history of Lahore.
The book was first published in 1907.

Esistono varie traduzioni in inglese delle La-dwangs r-Gyalrabs (Genealogie del Regno di Ladakh), prima fra tutte quella di Karl Marx (missionario moravo) che servì da base per la traduzione di August Hermann Francke, ristampata come Antiquities of Indian Tibet (1917 e 1926, ris. an. 1992) che con il precedente A History of Western Tibet (1907, ris.an. 1998) aveva delineato le vicende del regno, ma fra tutte queste traduzioni spicca, per commenti e note, quella dell'italiano professor Luciano Petech.