Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

Three Cups of Tea is the inspirational true story of a "regular guy" who was determined to change the world.

After his sister's death, Mortenson, an avid mountain climber, decided he wanted to climb Pakistan's K2 to honor his sister's memory. While in the midst of the daunting climb, he became disoriented and did not make it all the way to the summit. He wandered around on the mountain, ill and in need of assistance and found his way to a village of people who treated him kindly. While he was there, he witnessed the children of the village and their strong desire to learn. Though they had no real school and had to share a traveling teacher with the surrounding areas, the children would gather outside unattended and work on their math problems by scratching them in the dirt. In exchange for the village's kindness, Mortenson promised to come back and build a school for the children.

Mortenson had no money. In fact, when he came back to the US, he lived in his car because he had spent all of his money on his failed climb. As a nurse at a hospital, he saved all the money he could to put it toward building the school. Through the generosity of several benefactors, he realized his dream and much more. Now he works with the Central Asia Institute and has built not only schools, but programs for the adults so they will have the the things they need to make items to sell. He has also worked with villages to provide them with a means of obtaining clean drinking water.

Mortenson believes that by educating the children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the surrounding area and helping them to know that they can have a future other than what the radical Madras schools offer, we can fight terrorism without having to fire a shot.

Non-Fiction - 2007