Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson

Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson

420 pages Hardcover (Non-Fiction)

This is a follow up book to Three Cups of Tea. I will start with a little background to make sense of everything. At the beginning Mortenson attempts to climb K2. While coming down the mountain, after failing to reach the top, he gets lost. After almost starving he finds himself in a tiny mountain village called Korphe. Haji Ali is a town elder and brings the best of everything in the village to help this total stranger. After recovering from his ordeal he wants to help the village for their kindness. He sees the children in “school” in a field, writing in the dirt. He vows to make a school for the village. The first book focuses on the building of that school and how it opens up the floodgates for many more schools to be built in Pakistan.

Stones into Schools takes up roughly were the first book left off. At the beginning of the book a group of Afghani horsemen ride across a pass into Pakistan to meet with Mortenson. They convince him that a school needs to be made for the Kirghiz people in the Wakhan region of northern Afghanistan. He makes a solemn oath to build the school. Unfortunatly, soon after America attacks Afghanistan.

Over the next ten years in the midst of a war and through a major earthquake Moretenson’s organization, the Central Asia Institute, start to build schools across Afghanistan. They are plagued with bureaucratic nonsense, political upheaval, attacks from the Taliban, resistant family members, sickness and natural disasters. Mortenson meets Sarfraz Kahn. He is fluent in many lauguages and has the personality needed to persuade people into doing what is needed. Sarfraz Kahn and the other members of “The Dirty Dozen” work together to start making peace by spreading education. The ultimate goal is to build the school for the Wakhan Kirghiz.

Greg Mortenson writes from the heart. It feels as if he is writing this out to someone close to him. He reveals his owns weaknesses and worries as he attempts to build schools at the “Last Best Place” in the world. I tore through the book easily reading 50 pages a night before realizing I needed to go to sleep. The subject matter is something that is very dear to me: Education and an alternative to war.

5 Intellectual/ Emotional: The whole point is to be doing something constructive rather that destructive. More has been done by a small non-profit organization to encourage peaceful resolution than all the money spent on wars.

4 Style/ Readability: Mortenson presents himself in a humble and straight forward way. It feels as if you are being recounted the major events that he has been involved with. At no point do you get bogged down. You can just keep turning pages.

3 Long Term: As the “current event” status of what is happening with the school wanes so will the popularity of the book. BUT I think that this has the potential to be the start of a whole new way of doing foreign relations. Hopefully those that make these decisions can take from what Mortenson and the CAI has done and make peaceful resolutions rather than bombs.

12 out of 13. I personally feel both of his books should be required reading for most people. When the money it makes to make a bomb could go to make a school and we are still making bombs then there is something wrong with what we are doing. I think anyone with an opinion on how American involves itself in other countries can gain something from both Stone into Schools and Three Cups of Tea.


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