Co-authored by mountain climber Greg Mortenson and journalist David Oliver Relin, Three Cups is the fourth annual selection of the HSU/CR partnership, which provides a forum to promote literacy and the free exchange of ideas. The forum’s precept is, “A community that reads together shares a uniquely human experience.”
Both the HSU and CR campus communities will host group sessions in Fall 2009 to examine the book’s themes. A fall one-unit book club class at HSU will be open to the general public as well as students. The class is designated English 480 and sign-up can be arranged via WebReg, Open University or Extended Education. Small discussion groups meet evenings four to five times during the semester.
The New York Times number one best-seller chronicles Mortenson’s failed attempt to scale the world’s second highest mountain, K2. Exhausted afterward, he wandered into a desperately poor Pakistani hamlet where he was nursed back to health and where he learned that the community could not pay a dollar a day to hire a teacher.
Mortenson launched a humanitarian campaign, tirelessly collected funds in small amounts from the grassroots and went on to establish 78 schools. He emphasizes community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls.
Tom Brokaw, the first and initially only donor, commented, “Greg Mortenson’s dangerous and difficult quest to build schools in the wildest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only a thrilling read, it’s proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.”
The highly regarded Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid, best-selling author of “Descent into Chaos”, said, “Pakistan and Afghanistan are both failing their students on a massive scale. The work Mortenson is doing, providing the poorest students with a balanced education, is making them much more difficult for the extremist madrassas to recruit.”
Further information about Humboldt State’s one-unit book club offering this fall is available from Erin Sullivan in the English Department at erin@humboldt.edu or 826-3128.