Biographies & Memoirs | Memoirs | Personal Memoirs
Biographies & Memoirs | Humanitarians
Asia; Pakistan; Afghanistan; Girl's Schools; Humanitarian assistance from Americans

This is the astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard.

Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea  combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.

Greg Mortenson was born Dec. 27, 1957 to Lutheran missionary parents in St. Cloud, Minnesota (USA).  Through the leadership of the Lutheran Church, Mortenson's father was a fundraiser for and development director of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, Tanzania's first teaching hospital. Mortenson's mother was the founding principal of International School Moshi. Greg spent his early childhood and adolescence in Tanzania, East Africa, where he learned to speak Swahili fluently.  In the early 1970s, when Greg was 15 years old, the family left Tanzania and moved back to Minnesota. Greg attended high school in Roseville, Minnesota, and after high school served in the United States Army in Germany from 1975 to 1977 as a Medic and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Following his discharge, Greg attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota from 1977 to 1979 on an athletic (football) scholarship. Greg graduated from the Univ. of South Dakota in 1993 with a Bachelor’s Degree in liberal studies and an associate's degree in nursing. Greg is co-founder and executive director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute as well as the founder of the educational charity Pennies for Peace. He is co-author of  Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time  which remained on the New York Times non-fiction best seller list for four years.  He also is author of Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

From the author of the #1 bestseller Three Cups of Tea, the continuing story of this determined humanitarian's efforts to promote peace through education

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.

Since the 2006 publication of Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson has traveled across the U.S. and the world to share his vision with hundreds of thousands of people. He has met with heads of state, top military officials, and leading politicians who all seek his advice and insight. The continued phenomenal success of Three Cups of Tea proves that there is an eager and committed audience for Mortenson's work and message.

Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, Lauren Manning-a wife, the mother of a ten-month-old son, and a senior vice president and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald-came to work, as always, at One World Trade Center. As she stepped into the lobby, a fireball exploded from the elevator shaft, and in that split second her life was changed forever.

Lauren was burned over 82.5 percent of her body. As he watched his wife lie in a drug-induced coma in the ICU of the Burn Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Greg Manning began writing a daily journal. In the form of e-mails to family, friends, and colleagues, he recorded Lauren’s harrowing struggle-and his own tormented efforts to make sense of an act that defies all understanding. This book is that e-mail diary: detailed, intimate, inspiring messages that end, always, as if a prayer for a happy outcome:

LOVE, GREG & LAUREN

We share this story day by astonishing day. Greg writes of the intricate surgeries, the painful therapies, and the constant risk of infection Lauren endured. Through his eyes we come to know the doctors, nurses, aides, and therapists who cared for her around the clock with untiring devotion and sensitivity. We also come to know the families with whom he shared wrenching hospital vigils for their own loved ones who were waging a battle that some would not win.

It was, most of all, Greg’s belief that Lauren would win her brave fight for life that kept him writing. Through his eyes we see what she could not-their toddler’s first steps, the video of his first birthday party, the compassionate messages of hope from around the world. And we are there as Lauren gradually emerges into awareness, signaling first with her eyes, then with smiles, her understanding of the words Greg speaks to her, the poems he recites, the songs he plays.

Most miraculously, we are there when Lauren walks out of the Burn Center.

The world knows all too well both the nightmare and the heroism that have marked this t...

Ruby Oliver, the neurotic, hyperverbal heroine of the The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, and The Treasure Map of Boys, is back!
 
 
Ruby Oliver is in love. Or it would be love, if Noel, her real live boyfriend, would call her back. But Noel seems to have turned into a pod-robot lobotomy patient, and Ruby can’t figure out why.

Not only is her romantic life a shambles:
Her dad is eating nothing but Cheetos,
Her mother’s got a piglet head in the refrigerator,
Hutch has gone to Paris to play baguette air guitar,
Gideon shows up shirtless,
And the pygmy goat Robespierre is no help whatsoever.
 
Will Ruby ever control her panic attacks?
Will she ever understand boys?
Will she ever stop making lists?
(No to that last one.)
 
Roo has lost most of her friends. She’s lost her true love, more than once. She’s lost her grandmother, her job, her reputation, and possibly her mind. But she’s never lost her sense of humor. The Ruby Oliver books are the record of her survival.