Three Cups of Tea

Greg Mortenson - A Biography

“You can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change”.  

                                       Greg Mortenson.  

Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute, Pennies For Peace and co-author of New York Times bestseller ‘Three Cups of Tea’ which has been a # 1 New York Times bestseller for 82 weeks since its January 2007 release, and was Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year.

Mortenson was born in Minnesota in 1957. He grew up on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro,Tanzania. His father Dempsey, co-founded Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, a teaching hospital, and his mother, Jerene, founded the International School Moshi.

On July 24th, 1992, Mortenson’s younger sister, Christa, died from a massive seizure after a lifelong struggle with epilepsy. In 1993, to honor his sister’s memory, Mortenson tried to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain in the Karakoram Range. His bid to reach the summit failed due to fatigue and harsh weather. While recovering in a local village called Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand, and made a promise to help them build a school.

From that rash promise, grew a remarkable humanitarian campaign, in which Mortenson has dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. As of 2008, Mortenson has established over 78 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 28,000 children, including 18,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before.

He survived an 8 day kidnapping in tribal area, a firefight between feuding Afghan warlords, fatwas from enraged Islamic mullahs, CIA investigations and hate mail and death threats from fellow Americans after 9/11, for helping Muslim children with education.

On March 23rd, 2009, Greg Mortenson received Pakistan's highest civil award, Sitara-e-Pakistan ("Star of Pakistan") for his sixteen-year effort to promote peace through rural girls' education and literacy, in an official ceremony in Islamabad.

While not overseas half the year, Mortenson, 51, lives in Montana, USA, with his wife, Dr. Tara Bishop, and two children.

What Others Say

"Greg Mortenson represents the best of America. He's my hero. And after you read Three Cups of Tea, he'll be your hero, too." U.S. representative Mary Bono (R-Calif.)

"Three Cups of Tea is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time. Greg Mortenson's dangerous and difficult quest to build schools in the wildest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only a thrilling read, it's proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world." Tom Brokaw

"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, best-selling author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia

"Mortenson's mission is admirable, his conviction unassailable, his territory exotic and his timing excellent. His story would have been better served, though, by a tougher editor and a book that was shorter, leaner and freer of fawning."  Pamela Constable, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)

Traveling to better the world

Book reviews: Listen to the Wind, by Greg Mortenson