An appropriate holiday read

It's rare for me to recommend books to people I don't know very well. While I might see the barely contained brilliance in "The Boys of Summer," an unassuming stranger who thinks that baseball is something you watch in purgatory might rather steer clear.

I'm breaking that trend, though, and recommending "Three Cups of Tea" to anyone who will listen. That includes you, dear reader.

The book is no literary masterpiece, though it is well-written. It's the non-fiction account of one man and, as the jacket says, his "mission to promote peace one school at a time."

The man, Bozeman resident Greg Mortenson, builds schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan for boys and — especially — girls. After a failed attempt to climb K2, the world's second highest and arguably most challenging peak, Mortenson stumbled into a remote mountain village and was so taken by the hospitality they showed him, that he promised to return and build a school. He kept his word and was launched on a mission that saw him kidnapped by Muslim extremists, harassed by stubborn provincial officials and, ultimately, change the destinies of children in a part of the world increasingly lumped into one scary category by Westerners.

Mortenson makes no excuse for extremism and the terrorist actions it breeds, but he does examine it and make clear that he believes the answers are in books, not bombs. He was in Pakistan on Sept. 11, 2001 and he takes the reader on a tour of the changes he witnessed in the years leading up to that fateful day. He traveled to Afghanistan weeks after the Taliban had fallen and into the remote corners of the country where they still hold sway. In all of these places he builds small, sturdy buildings for fractions of what the government would spend.

The book has been a massive success and has become a fixture on the New York Times bestseller list as well as set the word-of-mouth chain afire.

Mortenson's work is proof that anyone can make a change — a big one. In these uncertain times he presents a view of tolerance and understanding, realizing that terrorists — like racists and other zealots — are not born, they're made. If a child's only chance for a roof and a meal is a radical madrassa school where they learn hatred for the West and a fanatical brand of Islam, then it's not hard to imagine what they will become.

Mortenson's message has found favor around the country and the world and I can think of no better one for Christmas time. Though I believe the word is thrown around so much today it has been cheapened to the point of being meaningless, Mortenson is an American hero. After reading his book, he is certainly mine.

—Alex Strickland