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 Everyone needs to read this August 7, 2008
P. Shepley (Indianapolis)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are frustrated with the current state of world affairs, particularly America's role in them, read this wonderful book. Greg Mortensen is not a Superman, just a guy willing to take personal risks to bring education to children (especially girls) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, he is doing Super work, and asking for nothing more than donations to build even more schools. His work shows how we need to be in a war of ideas, not one of weapons. But this is not a preachy book - it is actually pretty exciting and very moving.
 This book touched my soul ! August 7, 2008
Mary E. Petit (California, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this book for my grown daughter because we are both tea lovers. I thought the storyline would incorporate tea drinking ceremonies with a worthwhile project in a remote part of the world. I never imagined what was in store for us. I became completely engrossed in Greg's mission, humbled by what I was reading, embarrassed that I had not heard of or read about this mission before, and became very emotional. When 9/11 hit, I was angry that our world was changing, that there was so much hate and ignorance, and that my future grandchildren would be growing up in a world of terror. Education has always been emphasized in my family as I am sure it is in many families. But Greg took this giant leap. We ALL need to take this giant leap. This is the best book I have ever read. It touched my soul. Read it and do something, anything, to make a difference in this world.
Three Cups of Tea August 7, 2008
J. Kehoe (Illinois)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Terrific, inspiring, insightful, exciting, book. We need more Greg Mortensons, or we have to become more like him.
Pure Brilliance! August 6, 2008
Shawn Evans (Windsor, CO United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read the book, then my wife read it, and then all of our friends finished the book in record time. One evening, my boys (ages 8 and 6) asked me about Three Cups of Tea (after overhearing many conversations about it). I tried to explain, however, I finally gave up and simply sat down and started reading it to them. After a few weeks we finished and we are all better for the experience. They have started raising money already, and plan to talk to their school's teachers and administrators as soon as school starts again in a few weeks to try to develop a fundraising program for the entire school.
Well done Greg and David!
Reaching the highest summit August 6, 2008
Zinta Aistars (Portage, MI United States)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Sometimes the only way to find what you are looking for is by getting lost. Often, the only way to achieve victory is first to fail. If Greg Mortenson had not yet learned these two lessons when attempting to reach the summit of K2 in 1993--the second highest mountain in the world but, it is said, the toughest to climb--then he learned these lessons on the way down. He would never forget.
Greg Mortenson is a three-cup tea drinker. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the tradition is that with the first cup, one is a stranger; with the second cup, one is a friend; but with the third cup, one has become family. For family, one is prepared to do anything, even to sacrifice one's life.
As a young man, Mortenson was a mountain climber and a military man, so he understood hard work and discipline. He had learned how to set a goal, keep his eyes on the summit, and go for it--with everything in him. Climbing K2 was a special challenge he had set for himself, a kind of tribute to his sister who had died young. He failed the climb, however, and when he turned around, short of the summit, and headed back down, Mortenson realized that he had gotten lost. He had intended to meet his guide in a town in the foothills, but instead had kept going down the road and ended up in a village in the Karakoram mountains. Exhausted, hungry, filthy, he was greeted with three cups of wretched tasting tea and the warm embrace of family.
Three Cups of Tea is the story of Greg Mortenson's decade of building 55 schools across Pakistan and Afghanistan in gratitude for that moment of welcome for a lost man. Many of them are schools for girls, the often forgotten ones who find a new chance at life through education. While for much of his first years in this role, Mortenson himself toes the edge of poverty, working on a bare bone salary, funding much of the school building through the kindness of a rich mentor and various other donations, he is finally recognized for the work that he does after the events of 9/11. No, not right away. Initially, he receives bags of hate mail for "helping the enemy." But there comes a fascinating turning point in the story when wiser minds begin to realize that the answer to terrorism, perpetrated, after all, by a few, is not the violence of war against many, but through the expression of human kindness--and education.
This is truly a remarkable story. If anyone deserves the Nobel Peace Prize (and there is such talk), then it is Greg Mortenson. This story is about the world-altering change one man can create. Let no one ever again say that one person cannot make a difference.
Written by David Oliver Relin, who travels all of Mortenson's paths to record this story, it is far more fascinating than any novel. Mortenson climbed his mountain. Not K2, but a mountain that no one believed he could climb, and he took 55 schools full of eager children, and the villages that surrounded them, to the highest summit.
Not only highly recommended. This book is a must, must, must read, and no less so with the elections of leaders now looming.
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