Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
I loved the themes of facing insurmountable odds and overcoming even larger obstacles in this book. Greg Mortenson turned the huge failure of not climbing to the top of K2 into a life of even higher summits. This book was a fascinating and inspirational read, especially if you are interested untraditional nonprofit work. And by “untraditional,” I mean nonprofit work that we don’t always hear about or read in the newspaper, like Ashoka, TFA, or College Summit.
One of my favorite quotes from the book:
“That Day Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life,” Mortenson says. “We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We’re the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their ‘shock and awe’ campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”