Book Review: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

In a time of war and killing, this book documents an unbelievable journey of one man’s mission of conquering Northern parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan through building children’s schools after a failed attempt to conquer K-2, the second highest mountain in the world and by far the deadliest. The story is very moving as Greg Mortenson tries to achieve the impossible with no knowledge of the language/customs of that part of the world and above all with almost no money in his pocket to start with. The mission to build a school in the village started as a way of saying thanks to his hosts in Baltistan who saved him from near death while he was climbing K-2. The narrative is very gripping with a lot of twists and turns. As I was more than half way reading through the book, I was so moved that I made the cardinal mistake of taking a break and searching for Greg Mortenson on the web. To my dismay I found several articles including the one from CBS 60 minutes accusing that many portions of the book were a figment of the author’s imagination. The last straw was coming across the news from 2015 where Greg was forced to resign from the Central Asia Institute charity that he had co-founded for the specific purpose of building schools. Back in 2012, the Montana attorney general accused him of using the charity to enrich himself. A settlement was later reached where he was forced to repay $1 million that he illegally took from the charity. Despite reading through these negative articles, I ploughed through the book to finish it. The whole episode indeed leaves a bad taste and makes you wonder which parts were true and which weren’t. However, I should admit that despite his personal failings and even if a small part (if not more) of the story were to be true, it is indeed a tremendous accomplishment.
Finally, if you are ok in reading a book where the author talks about himself in third person and brags about his accomplishments, read on.

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