Three Cups of Tea--------------------------------------------------Here we drink three cups of tea to do business, the first you area stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you joinour family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything - evendie' - Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram mountains, Pakistan.In 1993, after a terrifying and disastrous attempt to climb K2, a mountaineercalled Greg Mortenson drifted, cold and dehydrated, into an impoverishedPakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains. Moved by the inhabitants'kindness, he promised to return and build a school. Three Cups ofTea is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Overthe next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools- especially for girls - in remote villages across the forbidding andbreathtaking landscape of Pakistan and Afghanistan, just as the Talibanrose to power. His story is at once a riveting adventure and a testamentto the power of the humanitarian spirit.--------------------------------------------------Author Biography: Greg Mortenson is the director of the Central AsiaInstitute, and he spends several months each year building schoolsin Pakistan and Afghanistan. He lives in Montana with his wife andtwo children. David Oliver Relin is a globe-trotting journalistwho has won more than forty national awards for his writing and editing.He lives in Portland, Oregon.