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   Summary and Book Reviews

Three Cups of Tea: Summary and book reviews of Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, plus links to an excerpt from Three Cups of Tea and a biography of Greg Mortenson.

Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea
One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
by Greg Mortenson, David O. Relin
Hardcover: Mar 2006,
352 pages.
Paperback: Jan 2007,
352 pages.

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Biography (Mortenson)
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Biography (Relin)
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Critics' Opinion:   very good
Readers' Rating:  3.5 Stars
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Book Summary

The inspiring account of one man's campaign to build schools in the most dangerous, remote, and anti-American reaches of Asia

In 1993 Greg Mortenson was the exhausted survivor of a failed attempt to ascend K2, an American climbing bum wandering emaciated and lost through Pakistan's Karakoram Himalaya. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of an impoverished Pakistani village, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school. From that rash, earnest promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time—Greg Mortenson's one-man mission to counteract extremism by building schools, especially for girls, throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban.

Award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin has collaborated on this spellbinding account of Mortenson's incredible accomplishments in a region where Americans are often feared and hated. In pursuit of his goal, Mortenson has survived kidnapping, fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, repeated death threats, and wrenching separations from his wife and children. But his success speaks for itself. At last count, his Central Asia Institute had built fifty-five schools. Three Cups of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time.

BOOK REVIEWS
Very Good BookBrowse

Three Cups of Tea is a truly inspiring story and also a very readable action-adventure! Many climbers have passed through the same areas of Pakistan as Mortenson, and made the same promises to the local people - to help them in some way or another; but the difference between Greg and so many others is that he followed through. He didn't set out to be a hero, he didn't even set out to 'make a difference' - he just set out to fulfill a promise that would have been so easy to forget. Despite the many obstacles in his way he raised the money and returned to Pakistan, but it took a further two-years, more money and many road-blocks, to build that first school.  
Full Review Members Only (members only, 587 words).

Media Reviews

Very Good  Kirkus Reviews
Answering by delivering what his country will not, Mortenson is "fighting the war on terror the way I think it should be conducted," Relin writes. This inspiring, adventure-filled book makes that case admirably.

Very Good  Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships, this book will win many readers' hearts.

Very Good  Washington Times - Ann Geracimos
The story of how this happened is a cliffhanger as well as an first-hand introduction to the people and places of a region little understood by most Americans. The subtitle, "One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations . . . One School at a Time," underscores the motivation behind his work.

He attributes his inspiration to a series of accidental encounters with strangers who cared for him after failing in his original mission to lay his sister's necklace on the K2 summit. Clearly, he is a man apart. But the trained nurse, mountaineer, natural linguist and diplomat is also a thoroughly grounded one. The challenges and how he faced them are ready-made for the movies or TV.

Author Blurb  Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia
Three Cups of Tea is beautifully written. It is also a critically important book at this time in history. The governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan are both failing their students on a massive scale. The work Mortenson is doing, providing the poorest students with a balanced education, is making them much more difficult for the extremist madrassas to recruit.

Author Blurb  Tom Brokaw
Three Cups of Tea is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time. Greg Mortenson's dangerous and difficult quest to build schools in the wildest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only a thrilling read, it's proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.

Author Blurb  U.S. representative Mary Bono (R-Calif.)
Greg Mortenson represents the best of America. He's my hero. And after you read Three Cups of Tea, he'll be your hero, too.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated 2 of 5 of 5 by The T-A-N-E
Painful to read, despite the great storyline.
The writing of this book pained my soul more each page. The metaphors are outright awful. This one really got to me (more so than the other thousands):

"The images, like stones buried among coals to bake loaves of kurba, are too hot to ...   Read More

Rated 2 of 5 of 5 by bubbles
dull
Tree cups of tea was a very dull book in my opinion ! I had to read the book for a project for school and I got very bored every time I read a chapter in the book ! I think it should have been more exciting !

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