BookBrowse Reviews Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, David O. Relin

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Three Cups of Tea

One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time

by Greg Mortenson, David O. Relin

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, David O. Relin X
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, David O. Relin
  • Critics' Opinion:

    Readers' Opinion:

  • First Published:
    Mar 2006, 352 pages

    Paperback:
    Jan 2007, 352 pages

    Genres

  • Rate this book


Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
Buy This Book

About this Book

Reviews

BookBrowse:


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

From the book jacket: 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.

Comment: 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.

Once he'd completed his promise, he didn't just go home feeling good about himself, he kept going and, despite surviving kidnappings, fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, repeated death threats, and wrenching separations from his wife and children, his Central Asia Institute has built 55 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan bringing educational opportunities to children who previously had none, at a fraction of the cost it would take the local governments to build similar schools - assuming they had the funds and inclination to build them in the first place.

The next time I'm feeling low I'm going to pick up Three Cups of Tea, to remind myself what can be achieved if one has the tenacity to keep bouncing back despite the odds!

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in March 2006, and has been updated for the February 2007 edition. Click here to go to this issue.

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access become a member today.
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Three Cups of Tea, try these:

  • The Three-Year Swim Club jacket

    The Three-Year Swim Club

    by Julie Checkoway

    Published 2016

    About this book

    The inspirational, untold story of impoverished children who transformed themselves into world-class swimmers.

  • The Chosen One jacket

    The Chosen One

    by Carol Lynch Williams

    Published 2010

    About this book

    More by this author

    Kyra has grown up in an isolated fundamentalist community never questioning that her father has three wives and she has twenty brothers and sisters. But when the Prophet decrees that she must marry her sixty-year-old uncle - who already has six wives - she must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her ...

We have 15 read-alikes for Three Cups of Tea, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Greg Mortenson More books by David Relin
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

BookBrowse Sale!

Join BookBrowse and discover exceptional books for just $3/mth!

Find out more


Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Wifedom
    Wifedom
    by Anna Funder
    When life became overwhelming for writer, wife, and mother Anna Funder in the summer of 2017, she ...
  • Book Jacket: The Fraud
    The Fraud
    by Zadie Smith
    In a recent article for The New Yorker, Zadie Smith joked that she moved away from London, her ...
  • Book Jacket: Wasteland
    Wasteland
    by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
    Globally, we generate more than 2 billion tons of household waste every year. That annual total ...
  • Book Jacket: Disobedient
    Disobedient
    by Elizabeth Fremantle
    Born in Rome in 1593, Artemisia Gentileschi led a successful career as an artist throughout the ...

Book Club Discussion

Book Jacket
Fair Rosaline
by Natasha Solomons
A subversive, powerful untelling of Romeo and Juliet by New York Times bestselling author Natasha Solomons.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    All You Have to Do Is Call
    by Kerri Maher

    An inspiring novel based on the true story of the Jane Collective and the brave women who fought for our right to choose.

  • Book Jacket

    Digging Stars
    by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

    Blending drama and satire, Digging Stars probes the emotional universes of love, friendship, family, and nationhood.

Win This Book
Win Moscow X

25 Copies to Give Away!

A daring CIA operation threatens chaos in the Kremlin. But can Langley trust the Russian at its center?

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A M I A Terrible T T W

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.