Greg Mortenson

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “A phenomenon hit Seattle last week. Everywhere Greg Mortenson went, people lined up to listen to his simple message about how to change the world.” Standing room-only crowds have become a trend for Greg Mortenson since the publication of Three Cups of Tea, the telling of his inspirational story that graced the New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list for almost forty weeks. His humanitarian efforts were also featured in Bill Clinton’s latest book, Giving.

Mortenson's follow-up to Three Cups of Tea, Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is scheduled for release in December 2009. The publisher's description of the new book reads:

In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where "Three Cups of Tea" left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women-all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.

Greg Mortenson is the founder and director of the nonprofit Central Asia Institute, dedicated to promoting literacy and education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is also the founder of Pennies for Peace, a program dedicated to teaching children about philanthropy and cultural understanding, currently in place in over 500 U.S. schools.

Mortenson’s biography and New York Times bestseller, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, was Time Magazine’s 2006 Asia Book of the Year; the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book of the Year; and recipient of the prestigious Kiriyama Prize.

Greg Mortenson grew up on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, from 1958 to 1973. There, his father, Irvin, founded the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, a 620-bed teaching hospital, and his mother, Jerene, founded the International School Moshi.

His love for mountaineering began in 1969 when at age eleven he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro for the first time.

Mortenson served as a medic in the U.S. Army during the Cold War in Germany (1975–1977) and received the Army Commendation Medal for his service. He later graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1983 with a degree in chemistry and nursing.

In July 1992, Mortenson’s younger sister, Christa, died from severe epilepsy. Christa’s death happened on the eve of her visit to the cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa, where Field of Dreams was filmed. A year later, to honor his sister’s death, Mortenson attempted to climb Pakistan’s treacherous K2, the world’s second highest mountain.

Following the 1993 K2 ascent, an exhausted and weak Mortenson stumbled into a local village named Korphe, where he was nursed back to health by impoverished mountain villagers. There, he found the literacy rate was only 3% and that one out of three children dies before the age of one.

In appreciation for their hospitality, Mortenson vowed to return and help build a school. From that rash promise grew a humanitarian campaign to promote education, especially for girls, in remote and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As of 2007, his nonprofit Central Asia Institute has set up fifty-eight schools, which provide education to over 24,000 children with an emphasis on girls’ education (14,000 females in his schools). He has also set up over two dozen women’s vocation centers, and serves as one of few advisors personally appointed by President Musharraf as part of a Pakistan education and curriculum reform committee.

Mortenson has overcome two fatwahs by Mullahs angered by his attempts to educate girls. In 1996, he survived an eight-day armed kidnapping in the tribal areas of Pakistan, and in 2003 escaped a firefight by feuding Afghan warlords by hiding in a truck under putrid animal hides going to a leather-tanning factory. After 9/11, he received hate mail and death threats from his fellow Americans for helping to educate Muslim children.

Mortenson has lived half his life in the third world and has traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan thirty-two times since 1993 for a duration of over sixty months. He has spoken extensively to promote cultural awareness and peace through education at numerous places, including Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, physicians associations, outdoor groups, universities, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, business and civic groups, and women’s organizations all across America.

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

Representative Mary Bono (California) calls Mortenson “a true American hero, whose creativity, courage, and compassion exemplify the true ideals of the American spirit.”

Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today, says “Mortenson doesn’t just climb mountains. He moves them, and through his dedication and determination, he’s given hope and changed the lives of thousands of children in a region of turmoil.”

Mortenson lives half the year in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife, Dr. Tara Bishop, the daughter of the late Dr. Barry Bishop, a National Geographic Society editor and NGS Chairman of the Research & Exploration Committee.