Three Cups of Tea is written by David Oliver and Greg Mortenson. This book is about how Mortenson helped people in Pakistan by becoming a co-founder of the Central Asia Institute, which helped build many schools and brought many women the gift of education. During his periods in Pakistan he was kidnapped, patronized against by conservative Pakistanis, and criticised by many Americans for helping Muslims. Through his experiences in Pakistan, Mortenson came to the conclusion that people need to stop terrorism through education.

Mortenson was exposed to generous and beneficial acts of kindness to help impoverished cultures at a very young age. His family moved from Minnesota to Tanzania when he was three months old, where his parents built a hospital and a school. In college Mortensen graduated with degrees in nursing and chemistry. He moved to California, and found his passion for climbing. Mortenson quickly became very skilled in climbing, and began to climb more dangerous mountains. He was invited to climb and help as a medic on an expedition to climb the K2 mountain, the second highest in the world, in Pakistan. It was on this trip that Mortenson accidentally strayed from the path, and found himself lost in the village of Korphe.

While in Korphe, he was treated with kindness and respect. He noticed that most of the people in the village suffered from malnutrition and diseases, and used his first aid kit to help some of the villagers. Mortenson also learned that there was no school in this village. Even if they did have one, the villagers wouldn’t be able to afford teachers. Despite their lack of education, the children tried to study on their own by using sticks to write numbers and sentences into the dirt. The children's desire to become educated motivated Mortenson to try and find ways to gather enough money to build a school for the village. He traveled back to America and raised awareness on this cause. After months of sending out informational letters, he heard back from a rich scientist named Jean Hoerni. Hoerni told Mortensen that he would provide $12,000 (Mortenson's estimated cost of the school), and Mortenson left for Pakistan to begin his project.

During this process Mortenson faced major setbacks; having to build a bridge in order to build the school, running out of money, and having to ask Hoerni for more money. With the help of some friends and Pakistani workers, Mortenson built the village of Korphe a school. This school didn’t discriminate against females, unlike other schools in Pakistan. Upon the finish of his first school in Korphe, Mortenson decided to build schools in other areas of Pakistan. In doing so, he faced the hardships of being captured and shunned by conservative Muslims. Instead of discouraging him from completing his dreams, it inspired him to build more schools that specifically focused on educating females and providing shelter for refugees.

During the times Mortenson spent back in America, he tried his best to raise funds for the CAI (Central Asia Institute), but was mainly unsuccessful. Upon returning to Pakistan, he took note of the malicious political tension rising. The conservative Muslim groups were building more schools called Madrassas that only offered education to males, trained these children to become conservative Muslims, and trained them to enroll themselves to fight in the war against Christianity. The terrorist attack on 9/11/01 occured while Mortenson was still in Pakistan, and following his return to America he faced even more resentment towards his actions helping Muslims. However, he did earn the support of a Representative in Congress, and was invited to present his story to them. A reporter wrote about Mortenson's journey and aspiration to raise money to provide schools for Pakistan, which he greatly benefitted in donations from. Eventually, Mortenson decided to expand the CAI’s building of schools into Afghanistan and to not limit the increase of knowledge only in Pakistan.

In the time leading up to 9/11, Mortenson noticed that the increase of hatred and political tension was due to the Madrassas built by the conservative Muslims. He realized that if Americans spent time to build schools educating both genders on school topics that steered away from conservative Muslim beliefs, then terrorism would decline. Although Mortenson stressed this idea to Americans, people rejected this concept simply because they refused to help any Muslim. This issue is still very relevant in today's society. People around the world need to be raising money to help these impoverished and war stricken countries build schools to properly educate all the children to reject the ideas of terrorism. By following Mortenson's example, we could cause a great decline in terrorist attacks and hopefully resolve the religious and political tension still existing in today's world.