Is there anything I can read about the Buddhist tradition today?
The Broken Buddha isn't exactly a history -- more of a snapshot, a description, an account of the author's personal experiences -- his description of people he met and their attitudes and behaviours which he saw ... not about "personalities", in that the people he describes are unnamed or not famous.

Seven Years in Tibet is history (ending in 1950) -- but by a non-Buddhist, and more about the culture, society, geography and politics of Tibet at the time, than about Buddhism.