In 1993 a mountaineer named Greg Mortenson drifted into an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. Moved by the inhabitants' kindness, he promised to return and build a school. This is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Over the next decade Mortenson, through his Central Asia Institute, built not just one but 55 schools—especially for girls—in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban. His story is at once a great adventure and a testament to the power of the humanitarian spirit.
"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."—Ahmed Rashid
