ABOUT THE BOOK Like so many others, I remember reading Greg Mortenson’s revolutionary Three Cups of Tea for a college class. The book was an instant hit, both in the media and in my own mind. No one could resist its tale of compassion, adventure, and triumph, set in the exotic Far-Middle East but offering an uplifting tale in sharp contrast to news about war and conflict. Greg Mortenson himself appealed to me greatly. Who could not like a mountain-climbing humanitarian who escaped near-death to fall in love, all while creating a series of schools throughout impoverished Afghanistan and Pakistan? It was movie magic... And then it really was movie magic. Three Cups of Deceit pulled back the veil on Three Cups of Tea, revealing the lies, fabrications, and dishonesty Mortenson appears to have used when creating his adventure tale. What Three Cups of Deceit offers is a mixture of both argument and evidence. It does not come across as a separate story, but as a painful analysis of Tea and the sequel Stones into Schools. MEET THE AUTHOR Tyler Lacoma writes on business, environmental, and fitness topics, but squeezes in some time for fiction, too. He graduated from George Fox University and lives in beautiful Oregon, where he fills spaces between writing with outdoor fun, loud music, and time with family and friends. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK The text goes on to reveal how such actions damaged the causes the CAI has tried to advance and how the organization is not as successful as Mortenson would like its supporters to believe. Krakauer also takes time to analyze Mortenson’s own mistakes, financial sloppiness, and possible motives for fictionalizing what could have been an honest account of conditions in the Himalayas. The reason, according to Deceit, is only, “To inflate the myth of Greg Mortenson.” Krakauer divides his text into three different sections, eschewing chapters for a more organic flow. At less than 80 pages long, the bulk of the book does not require frequent headings to stay readable. The first section section, titled The Creation Myth, examines the account Greg Mortenson gives in Three Cups of Tea when he first came across Haji Ali and the village of Korphe, where he was inspired to build the first school. Krakauer frequently moves back and forth between his own exposition and quotes from Tea and other pieces written by or about Mortenson to highlight the differences in fact... Buy a copy to keep reading!

ABOUT THE BOOK When I first read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, I was enthralled and amazed. The story he tells about a doomed Mt. Everest expedition in 1996 is both thrilling and terrifying, and it also has a lot to say about the problems with the commercialization of adventure expeditions on the highest mountain in the world. It’s a well-researched and extraordinarily well-written first-hand account of the tragic expedition, and Krakauer’s excellent storytelling makes for gripping reading. Not only was he a member of this expedition, but he knows how to tell a story - how to introduce characters, build drama, and describe situations. He also has a gift for researching and writing history. When I first read Into Thin Air, I was prompted to read everything I could get my hands on about Mt. Everest. You could spend several years reading through this material, since there have been many books published about Mt. Everest, including several about this same disaster. Reading as many as you can will throw you into a fascinating, complex, and sometimes contradictory world of adventurers, scientists, business people, Tibetan and Nepalese guides, socialites, swindlers, politicians, artists, dreamers, and many other characters - as well as the frigid and challenging character of the mountain itself. Whether this is your first or fiftieth foray into the literature of Mt. Everest, you won’t be disappointed by Into Thin Air, and it will certainly draw you into its subzero spell. MEET THE AUTHOR professional writer Vivian Wagner has wide-ranging interests, from technology and business to music and motorcycles. She writes features regularly for ECT News Network, and her work has also appeared in American Profile, Entrepreneur, Bluegrass Unlimited, and many other publications. She is also the author of Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel 2010). For more about her, visit her website at www.vivianwagner.net. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Into Thin Air (1997) began as a 1996 article for Outside Magazine. Krakauer wanted to develop the story more fully, however, and thus was the book was born. He’d originally been assigned to examine the commercialization of Mt. Everest for the Outside article. That ended up being the focus of the story after all, but with a much more tragic outcome than he or his editors could have imagined. For the article and subsequent book, Krakauer joined an expedition led by Rob Hall’s Adventure Consultants. During that season, a number of other expeditions were also on the mountain along with Krakauer and Hall, including Scott Fischer’s Mountain Madness. Both Hall and Fischer were killed in the May 1996 disaster, along with six other climbers. Since its publication, Into Thin Air has been at the center of controversy surrounding Krakauer’s account of events, particularly in regards to questions about who was responsible for tragic errors made on the mountain. Much of the initial criticism of the book came from the Russian climbing guide Anatoli Boukreev, who disputed Krakauer’s depiction of him as neglecting his mountain guide duties. In response to Krakauer’s book, Boukreev published his own account of the tragedy, co-authored by G. Weston DeWalt, called The Climb (1997). In postscript to a later edition of Into Thin Air, Krakauer took up this debate and defended his account of the tragedy against Boukreev’s criticism. Buy a copy to keep reading!