Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin is part biography and part field manual on how to truly make a difference in the world.  Relin shares Mortenson’s story, growing up as a missionary kid in Africa, failing to summit K2, stumbling into the mountain villages of Pakistan, and creating an NGO to build schools for girls in those villages.  Tea is a fun read, laying out a life that takes place on three continents and is filled with deeper love, danger, failure and success than most of us can imagine.

The book climaxes just before 9/11.  Just as Mortenson’s organization, the Central Asia Institute, has just begun to catch some steam, he learns of his competition for the hearts and minds of impoverished muslims: Saudi funded Wahabi Madrassas and Mosques teaching and preaching jihad. 

Mortenson’s argument is straightforward: the causes of terrorism are poverty and ignorance.  With a little education (it cost about $12,000 to build a school) both of these can be eliminated. 

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragging on, Three Cups of Tea serves as a canary in a cole mine, sounding disaster if we do not treat the roots of our problems.