Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way - Softcover

Krakauer, Jon

 
9780307948762: Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0307948765 ISBN 13: 9780307948762
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Greg Mortenson, the bestselling author of Three Cups of Tea, is a man who has built a global reputation as a selfless humanitarian and children’s crusader, and he’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. But, as bestselling author Jon Krakauer demonstrates in this extensively researched and penetrating book, he is not all that he appears to be.
 
Based on wide-ranging interviews with former employees, board members, and others who have intimate knowledge of Mortenson and his charity, the Central Asia Institute, Three Cups of Deceit uncovers multiple layers of deception behind Mortenson’s public image. Was his crusade really inspired by a desire to repay the kindness of villagers who nursed him back to health when he became lost on his descent down K2? Was he abducted and held for eight days by the Taliban? Has his charity built all of the schools that he has claimed? This book is a passionately argued plea for the truth, and a tragic tale of good intentions gone very wrong.
 
100% of Jon Krakauer’s proceeds from the sale of Three Cups of Deceit will be donated to the “Stop Girl Trafficking” project at the American Himalayan Foundation (www.himalayan-foundation.org/live/project/stopgirltrafficking).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jon Krakauer is the author of eight books and has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. According to the award citation, "Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer." 

www.jonkrakauer.com

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   Greg Mortenson doesn’t hide his light under a bushel. He makes more than 160 public appearances annually, in all parts of the country and abroad, and frequently appears in the news. For each of the past three years he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. President Obama donated $100,000 of the award money from his own Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in 2009, to the Central Asia Institute (CAI)—the charity Mortenson launched fifteen years ago to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Visiting classrooms wherever he goes, Mortenson has persuaded 2,800 American schools to become fundraising partners; last year, schoolkids collecting “Pennies for Peace” boosted CAI revenues by $2.5 million. All told, his vigorous promotion of the Greg Mortenson brand generated $23 million in donations to CAI in 2010 alone.
   On March 29 of this year, I attended a lecture Mortenson gave in Cheyenne, Wyoming. As he walked onto the stage in the sold-out arena, more than two thousand men, women, and children leapt to their feet to express their admiration with cheers, whistles, and deafening applause. “If we really want to help people, we have to empower people,” Mortenson pronounced. “And empowering people starts with education.” A book cover depicting Afghan girls engrossed in study was projected onto the screen above the stage. “So I wrote this book called Three Cups of Tea,” he deadpanned. “Some of you might have heard about it…”
   Laughter rippled through the crowd. Hoping to get an autograph from Mortenson, hundreds of fans were holding copies of his book, which had spent the previous four years and two months on the New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list, and showed every sign of remaining there well into the future. Some five million copies are now in print, including special editions for “young readers” and “very young readers” (kindergarten through fourth grade). Moreover, the multitudes who have bought Three Cups haven’t merely read it; they’ve embraced it with singular passion. Since its publication in 2006, people galvanized by this autobiographical account of Mortenson’s school-building adventures have donated more than $50 million to the Central Asia Institute. The book’s popularity stems from its forceful, uncomplicated theme—terrorism can be eradicated by educating children in impoverished societies—and its portrayal of Mortenson as a humble, Gandhi-like figure who has repeatedly risked life and limb to advance his humanitarian agenda.
   Told in the third person by Mortenson’s co-author, David Oliver Relin, Three Cups begins with Mortenson hiking down Pakistan’s Baltoro Glacier in September 1993, having failed to climb K2, the second-highest peak on earth. A trauma nurse by profession, he’d been invited to join an expedition to K2 to serve as the team medic.1 After two months of punishing effort, however, Mortenson realized he lacked the strength to reach the summit, so he abandoned his attempt and left the expedition early. Exhausted and dejected, the thirty-five-year-old mountaineer reached into a pocket as he trudged down the trail and “fingered the necklace of amber beads that his little sister Christa had often worn. As a three-year-old in Tanzania, where Mortenson’s Minnesota-born parents had been Lutheran missionaries and teachers, Christa had contracted acute meningitis and never fully recovered. Greg, twelve years her senior, had appointed himself her protector.”
   In July 1992, at age twenty-three, Christa had suffered a massive epileptic seizure, apparently stemming from her childhood health problems, and died. Ten months later, Mortenson had trekked into the Karakoram Range with Christa’s necklace, intending to leave it on K2’s 28,267-foot summit, which is considerably more difficult to reach than the crest of Mount Everest. Now the defeated Mortenson “wiped his eyes with his sleeve, disoriented by the unfamiliar tears…. After seventy-eight days of primal struggle at altitude on K2, he felt like a faint, shriveled caricature of himself.” He wasn’t even sure he had the strength to make it to Askole, the village at trail’s end, fifty miles down the valley.
   A week into his homeward trek through Baltistan, as this corner of Pakistan is known, Mortenson became separated from Mouzafer Ali, the Balti porter he had hired to carry his heavy backpack. Without Mouzafer’s guidance, Mortenson took a wrong turn and lost his way. A few hours later, he arrived at a village he assumed was Askole. As Mortenson walked into the settlement, a throng of local youngsters, fascinated by the tall foreigner, gathered around him. “By the time he reached the village’s ceremonial entrance…he was leading a procession of fifty children.”
   Just beyond, Mortenson was greeted warmly by “a wizened old man, with features so strong they might have been carved out of the canyon walls.” His name was Haji Ali, the village chieftain. He led Mortenson to his stone hut, “placed cushions at the spot of honor closest to the open hearth, and installed Mortenson there…. When Mortenson looked up, he saw the eyes of the fifty children who had followed him,” peering down from a large square opening in the roof. “Here, warm by the hearth, on soft pillows, snug in the crush of so much humanity, he felt the exhaustion he’d been holding at arm’s length surge up over him.”
   At that moment, though, Haji Ali revealed to Mortenson that he wasn’t in Askole, as the American believed. Owing to his wrong turn, he’d blundered into a village called Korphe. “Adrenaline snapped Mortenson back upright. He’d never heard of Korphe…. Rousing himself, he explained that he had to get to Askole and meet a man named Mouzafer who was carrying all his belongings. Haji Ali gripped his guest by the shoulders with his powerful hands and pushed him back on the pillows.” Surrendering to fatigue, Mortenson closed his eyes and sank into a deep sleep.
In Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson never indicates exactly how many days he spent in Korphe on that initial visit in 1993, but he implies it was a lengthy stay:
 
From his base in Haji Ali’s home, Mortenson settled into a routine. Each morning and afternoon he would walk briefly about Korphe, accompanied, as always, by children tugging at his hands…. Off the Baltoro, out of danger, he realized just how precious his own survival had been, and how weakened he’d become. He could barely make it down the switchback path that led to the river…. Wheezing his way back up to the village, he felt as infirm as the elderly men who sat for hours at a time under Korphe’s apricot trees, smoking from hookahs and eating apricot kernels. After an hour or two of poking about each day he’d succumb to exhaustion and return to stare at the sky from his nest of pillows by Haji Ali’s hearth.
 
   During his protracted recuperation in Korphe, Mortenson became aware of the Baltis’ poverty, and “how close they lived to hunger.” He noticed the widespread malnutrition and disease, and learned that one out of every three Korphe children perished before their first birthday. “Mortenson couldn’t imagine discharging the debt he felt to his hosts in Korphe. But he was determined to try.” He gave away most of his possessions, including his camping stove and warm expedition clothing.
 
  Each day, as he grew stronger, he spent long hours climbing...

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Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307948765
ISBN 13 
9780307948762
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
128
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Anja's
service@anja-karge.de

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