Three Cups of Tea

Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of the non-profit organizations the Central Asia Institute and Pennies for Peace. He has established many schools in rural and often dangerous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 25,000 children. He survived an armed kidnapping, death threats and hate mail for helping Muslim children receive an education. While not overseas, Greg lives in Montana, USA, with his wife and two children. 
 
David Oliver Relin is the co-author of Three Cups of Tea and he has worked as both an editor and a reporter. He lives in Oregon, USA.

One day Greg Mortenson set out to climb K2 - the world's second highest mountain - in honour of his younger sister, but when another member of his group fell ill, they turned around and Greg became lost in the mountains of Pakistan. He wandered into a poor village, where the chief and his people took him in. Moved by their kindness, Greg promised to return and build a school for the children. 
 
This is the remarkable story of how, against all the odds, Greg built not only one but more than sixty schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and how he dedicated his life to establishing literacy and peace, and understanding.

Three Cups Of Tea

OVER HALF A MILLION PAPERBACKS SOLD IN THE US since publication in 2007, 37 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list

Greg Mortenson is the director of the Central Asia Institute, and he spends several months each year building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He lives in Montana with his wife and two children. 
 
David Oliver Relin is a globe-trotting journalist who has won more than forty national awards for his writing and editing. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

&lsquo;Here we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything &ndash; even die.&rsquo; 
 
Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram mountains, Pakistan 
 
 In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineer called Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants&rsquo; kindness, he promised to return and build a school. Three Cups of Tea is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools &ndash; especially for girls &ndash; in remote villages across the forbidding and breathtaking landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the Taliban rose to power. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit.

Greg Mortenson

In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women - all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.

Greg Mortenson

Books by Greg Mortenson

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