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About Author 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 bestseller for over nine months since its 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 (1958 to 1973). His father, was a founder of Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC) a 480 bed teaching hospital, and his mother founded the International School Moshi.

He served in the U.S. Army in Germany during the Cold War (1977-1979), where he received the Army Commendation Medal, and later graduated from the University of South Dakota (1983), and pursued graduate studies in neurophysiology.

On July 24th, 1992, Mortenson's younger sister, Christa, died from a massive seizure after a lifelong struggle with epilepsy on the eve of a trip to visit Dysersville, Iowa, where the baseball movie, ‘Field of Dreams’, was filmed.

In 1993, to honor his sister's memory, Mortenson climbed Pakistan's K2, the world's second highest mountain in the Karakoram range.

After K2, 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 and literacy, especially for girls, in remote, volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As of 2007, Mortenson has established over 61 schools in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 25,000 children, including 14,000 girls, where few education opportunities existed before.

His work has not been without difficulty. In 1996, he survived an eight day armed kidnapping in the Northwest Frontier Province NWFP tribal areas of Pakistan, escaped a 2003 firefight with feuding Afghan warlords by hiding for eight hours under putrid animal hides in a truck going to a leather-tanning factory. He has overcome two fatwehs from enraged Islamic mullahs, endured CIA investigations, and also received hate mail and death threats from fellow Americans after 9/11, for helping Muslim children with education.

Mortenson is a living hero to rural communities of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he has gained the trust of Islamic leaders, military commanders, government officials and tribal chiefs from his tireless effort to champion education, especially for girls.

He is one of few foreigners who has worked extensively for fifteen years (spending over 65 months) in the region now considered the front lines of the war on terror.

His cross-cultural expertise has brought him to speak on Capital Hill, D.C. think tanks, the Pentagon, Dept. of Defense, libraries, outdoor groups, universities, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, business and civic groups, women's organizations and more. From March 2006 through 2007, he has visited over 110 cities to talk about his message of peace through education.

NBC newscaster, Tom Brokaw, calls Mortenson, "one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, who is really changing the world".

Congresswoman Mary Bono (Rep 2 Cali.) says, "I've learned more from Greg Mortenson about the causes of terrorism than I did during all our briefings on Capitol Hill. He is a true hero, whose creativity, courage, and compassion exemplify the true ideals of the American spirit."

Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today, and the D.C.-based Freedom Forum, says "Mortenson doesn't just climb mountains. He moves them, and through his courage, he gives hope and has changed the lives of thousands of children in a region of turmoil considered the front lines of the war on terror".

Mortenson advocates girls' education as the top priority to promote economic development, peace and prosperity, and says, "you can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won't change".

While not overseas half the year, Mortenson, 49, lives in Bozeman, Montana with his wife, Dr. Tara Bishop, a clinical psychologist, and two children.

About Author David Oliver Relin

David Oliver Relin lives in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time", which was named the nonfiction winner of the 2007 Kiriyama Prize, The 2007 Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Book Of The Year, Time Magazine Asia Book Of The Year, People Magazine Critic's Choice, and a BookSense Notable Title.

Relin is a graduate of Vassar and was awarded the prestigious Teaching/Writing Fellowship at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. After Iowa, he received a Michener Fellowship to support his groundbreaking 1992 bicycle trip the length of Vietnam. He spent two further years reporting about Vietnam opening to the world, while he was based in Hue, Vietnam's former imperial capital. In addition to Vietnam and Pakistan, he has traveled to, and/or reported from, much of East Asia.

For two decades, Relin has focused on reporting about social issues and their effect on children. He is currently a Contributing Editor for Parade. He was Senior News Editor for react, an award-winning weekly with a circulation of five million launched by Parade. His investigative features on school shootings, ecstasy abuse, and teenagers in prison for Teen People helped that publication win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

Relin has won more than 40 national awards for work as both an editor and writer. His stories about child soldiers have been included in Amnesty International reports. And his investigation into the way the Immigration and Naturalization Service abused children in its custody contributed to the reorganization of that agency. He spends several months each year reporting on, lecturing about, and raising money for the ongoing child hunger crisis in America. Relin is currently at work on a novel about Vietnam.

About "Three Cups of Tea"

In "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time" Greg Mortenson, and acclaimed journalist David Oliver Relin, recount the unlikely journey that led Mortenson from a failed attempt to climb Pakistan's K2, the world's second highest mountain, to successfully building schools in some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading, Mortenson combines his unique background with his intimate knowledge of the third-world to fight terrorism with books, not bombs, and successfully bring education and hope to remote villages in central Asia. "Three Cups of Tea" is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time.

In 1993 Mortenson was descending from his failed attempt to reach the peak of K2. Exhausted and disoriented, he wandered away from his group into the most desolate reaches of northern Pakistan. Alone, without food, water, or shelter he eventually stumbled into an impoverished Pakistani village where he was nursed back to health.

While recovering he observed the village's 84 children sitting outdoors, scratching their lessons in the dirt with sticks. The village was so poor that it could not afford the $1-a-day salary to hire a teacher. When he left the village, he promised that he would return to build them a school.

From that rash, heartfelt promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time: Greg Mortenson's one-man mission to counteract extremism and terrorism by building schools—especially for girls—throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban.

Mortenson had no reason to believe he could fulfill his promise. In an early effort to raise money he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, businessmen, and other prominent Americans. His only reply was a $100 check from NBC's Tom Brokaw. Selling everything he owned, he still only raised $2,000. But his luck began to change when a group of elementary school children in River Falls, Wisconsin, donated $623 in pennies, thereby inspiring adults to take his cause more seriously. Twelve years later he's built fifty-five schools.

Mortenson and award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin have written a spellbinding account of his incredible accomplishments in a region where Americans are feared and hated. In pursuit of his goal, Mortenson has survived an armed kidnapping, fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, repeated death threats, and wrenching separations from his wife and children. Yet his success speaks for itself. This year the schools will educate 24,000 children.