Like countless others, I am heart-broken and viscerally angry since learning the news of Greg Mortenson’s conflation, exaggeration and fabrication of many of the stories and details in his two best-selling books “Three Cups of Tea” and “Stones in Schools”.
Mortenson, a former emergency room trauma nurse, former mountain climber, Nobel Peace Prize-nominated author, and co-founder of the Central Asia Institute (CAI), created a reputation as a quixotic humanitarian activist. And became an unlikely champion for girls’ education globally and building bridges to peace by constructing schools. His books sold more than 4 million copies and were standard reading for US service members deploying to Afghanistan. He consulted regularly with US military leadership on engagement of Pashtun tribesman.
In a decade of war news, economic turmoil, and frequent natural disasters, that the media gladly reported on and we, the public devoured; his were the on-going feel-good stories that rose above the cynicism and disillusionment.