Greg Mortenson was a mountaineer with his sights set on Pakistan’s unforgiving K2 when a disaster in his climbing party forced him to abort his attempt on the summit. On his way down, the exhausted climber got lost and wandered into a remote and impoverished village that had never seen a Westerner before.

As the kind residents helped Mortenson regain his strength, he committed to repaying them by building a school for the dozens of children he saw carving their lessons into the dirt with sticks. That promise would go on to transform Mortenson from a part-time nurse and climbing nut to a man obsessed with bringing education to some of the world’s most neglected people.

The story of how Mortenson managed to fulfill his naïve promise and go on not just to build one school, but dozens more across the remote mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, is nothing short of astounding. The fact that he survived this hostile environment at all, let alone succeeded in a humanitarian endeavor of such enormous proportions, is truly inspiring.

Part of what permitted Mortenson to make so much progress is that he allowed himself to learn how things needed to be done from the local people. Though American, Mortenson was raised by missionaries in Africa, and his sensitivity towards and ability to integrate into another culture was a crucial part of what made this project work.

In addition to providing valuable insight into the lives of a people the West knows little about, this book also offers a unique perspective of the events in Pakistan and Afghanistan that led to the current war on terror. Mortenson began building his small schools at the same time fundamentalist madrassas were also springing up in that part of the world. Though Mortenson couldn’t compete with either the pace or the money spent by those with a religious agenda, his success provides a powerful model for filling the gaps that the US military has left wide open in those vulnerable places.

I would recommend this amazing and educational book to pretty much anyone, but I do have to add one caveat. Though I was very moved by the story, I did not like the writing so much. The author and I seemed to have different pacing—he spent long passages talking about things of little interest to me while barely touching on aspects I wanted to know much more about. I was also put off by the book’s opening, which was a pumped up mix of macho adventure writing and fawning hero worship. Mortenson’s story is so extraordinary it doesn’t need this kind of inflation. While the author’s admiration for Mortenson is understandable, I would have enjoyed this book more without this kind of embellishment.