Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea is the contemporary biography of Greg Mortenson, a mountain-climber turned philanthropist who has spent the last decade building schools in the most remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The story starts out describing a failed attempt by Greg to scale K2, one of the most formidable mountains in the world. On his way down the mountain he became separated from his party and found himself lost in the icy Himalayan terrain. He stumbled into a tiny village, nearly frozen, and the inhabitants nursed him back to health. As he got to know the people in the village, he started to realize just how isolated they were from even the relatively close mountain base camps.

Although some English explorers had run across these kinds of villages in the past century and thought they represented a kind of pristine, perfect, Shangra La -- a culture untouched by outside civilization -- Greg came to realize that these people's lives were not quite as idyllic as one first thought. Many women died in childbirth and the infant mortality rate was high. He asked to see the village's school, and found a group of children huddled outside, doing their homework. He learned their teacher was only able to make it to their village several days a week. The kids were motivated to learn (much more so than American kids) but they simply had no resources. Greg made a vow to them and to himself to return to that village and build the children a school.

Thus began an undertaking that, over the course of time, became Greg's life work -- building schools for many of the villages that were too far for their governments to provide resources, or even care to. The book describes many harrowing experiences and near misses that Greg encountered as he took on the challenge of building schools for people who, at first, considered him an outsider. It describes Greg's challenges of fundraising at home, and the obstacles he had to overcome to get schools built abroad.

I found the book engrossing, not just because of the story line, but more so because I know this is the real life story of a real person. (I will get to hear the presentation of Greg Mortenson at the St. Louis Speaker Series this spring, which was the impetus for me reading the book.) The writing style is engaging, drawing you into each new vignette. It's a great education, as well, into the lifestyle and customs of peoples on the other side of the world. This knowledge, as the book points out, becomes especially important in the 9/11 era, as the United States is actively engaging this region of the world militarily. This is a book I highly recommend.