Three Cups of Tea is one of those rare reads that is so inspiring it makes you re-examine the entirety of your life and wonder if you shouldn't be doing something more meaningful with it.

I normally read books because I am fairly confident they are good -- either because someone has told me so or because I have read rave reviews. Three Cups of Tea is one of the very few times I bought a book solely on the basis of the intriguing blurb on the back cover, which states:

"Here in (Pakistan and Afghanistan), we drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything -- even die."
- Haji Ali, Korphe Village Chief, Karakoram Mountains, Pakistan

This is the background against which Greg Mortenson's remarkable story is told -- lost and despondent after a failed attempt to summit K2, the second highest mountain in the world, Mortenson stumbles into Korphe, a remote village cut off from both the world and assistance from the government of Pakistan. In this impossibly poor village where the only source of fuel is dried Yak dung, Mortenson is overwhelmed by the hospitality and kindness extended to a complete stranger and promises to do something to help their tiny village.

This story moved me to tears on several occasions. Mortenson goes to unbelievable lengths, spanning years of his life, in order to keep his word to illiterate tribal chiefs in some of the most dangerous regions of war-torn Pakistan and Afghanistan. It struck me how truly rare it is in our culture for someone to keep their word -- especially when keeping it means years of sacrifice and personal hardship -- let alone enduring kidnapping and death threats.

In one instance, Mortenson ventures into the tribal mountain passes of Afghanistan after 9/11, at great personal risk, in order to track down the 6 horsemen who had travelled 6 days over the mountains 6 years previously to find him in Pakistan and ask him to come to Afghanistan -- because somehow word had reached them that a big "Angrezi" (foreigner) was building schools for children when no one else would. All of the people Mortenson meets immediately grasp the truth that getting an education is the only means of breaking the vicious circle of poverty into which they have been born -- and the only hope for a better life for their children.

It is interesting to note how even conservative muslim mullahs in a post 9/11 world take to Mortenson -- almost instantly recognizing the sincerity of this American to help.

Following is an excerpt from a conversation between Mortenson and the elderly village chief, Haji Ali, that launches the author on his all-consuming mission:

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[Haji Ali] picked up his dog-eared, grease-spotted Koran and held it before the flames. "Do you see how beautiful this Koran is?" Haji Ali asked.

"Yes."

"I can't read it," he said. "I can't read anything. This is the greatest sadness in my life. I'll do anything so the children of my village never have to know this feeling. I'll pay any price so they have the education they deserve."

"Sitting there beside him," Mortenson says, "I realized that everything, all the difficulties I'd gone through ... was nothing compared to the sacrifices he was prepared to make for his people. Here was this illiterate man, who'd hardly ever left his little village in the Karakoram," Mortenson says. "Yet he was the wisest man I've ever met."

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p.s. Please visit www.threecupsoftea.com -- if you purchase the book through their website, 7% of all proceeds benefit a girls' education scholarship fund for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

At the risk of sounding like Paula Abdul again, I have to say that Nelson Mandela's autobiography -- "Long Walk to Freedom" -- is probably the best autobiography I have ever read and a book I would recommend to anyone as an incredible testimony of character, integrity and what it takes to be a leader. I actually bought this book many months ago but it took me awhile to psyche myself up to tackle its 625 pages. Once I started reading it, however, I literally could not put it down and ending up finishing it in roughly a week.

Long Walk to Freedom surprised me -- first, because I didn't expect Nelson Mandela to be so funny, dignified, humble and inspiring -- all at the same time. Second, I didn't know he was an attorney -- he actually practiced law for many years and continued to study and receive degrees during his long imprisonment. Third, I was surprised that a book this thick could be this interesting from start to finish.

The autobiography starts with Nelson's childhood in the Transkei region of South Africa. He was raised in a hut with mud floors and no electricity and yet, because his father was a Xhosa chief, he was allowed to sit at the feet of the ruling elders of his tribe and learn invaluable lessons of wisdom and leadership from a very young age. He also recounts the many times he went hungry during lunch at his college cafeteria -- too embarrassed to betray to his female classmates that he did not know how to eat with a knife and fork.

The bulk of the book, however, deals with how he came to be a freedom fighter and eventually the head of the ANC (African National Congress) and the internationally recognized leader of the fight against Apartheid. One of the most amazing aspects of his life was his unswerving dedication to the cause of justice, as well as his unshakeable belief that justice would prevail. He also exhibits an almost unbelievable level of self-discipline -- waking at 5am every morning for 27 years in prison to do an hour of exercise (even into his 70's), generally to the chagrin of his cellmates.

In one passage, Mandela relates the often ludicrous lengths to which the apartheid authorities would go in order to discriminate against the black prison inmates:

"So color-conscious were the authorities that even the type of sugar and bread supplied to whites and nonwhites differed: white prisoners received white sugar and white bread, while Coloured and Indian prisoners were given brown sugar and brown bread."

Personally, the greatest takeaway for me from Long Walk to Freedom is that, as great a man as Mandela is -- no matter how noble the cause and how great the achievement (he won the Noble Peace Prize for his work) -- the sad fact remains that he sacrificed his role as a husband and father in order to accomplish this, a fact that he himself acknowledges several times in the book:

Excerpt:

"When your life is the struggle, as mine was, there is little room left for family. That has always been my greatest regret, and the most painful aspect of the choice I made. 'We watched our children growing without our guidance,' I said at the wedding [of my daughter], 'and when we did come out of prison, my children said, 'We thought we had a father and one day he'd come back. But to our dismay, our father came back and he left us alone because he has now become the father of the nation.'

To be the father of a nation is a great honor, but to be the father of a family is a greater joy. But it was a joy I had far too little of."

I have to admit to being somewhat of a CNN junkie. I recently moved to a new apartment and decided to run an experiment on myself to see how long I could last without a TV. I survived for a month and a half. Last saturday, however, not being able to watch the news was starting to drive me crazy so I broke down and bought a TV.

Anderson Cooper has long been one of my favorite news reporters/anchors -- mostly because I appreciate the fact that he is not afraid to betray his own emotions in his reporting. It has always bothered me to watch news reports of the most heart-rending events -- from war to famine to natural disasters -- and then see the camera come back to a smiling anchor who cheerily whisks on to the next story. "How can you smile and act like nothing's wrong after seeing that??!!" I want to shout at the TV.

"Dispatches from the Edge" is a raw book about rediscovering that kind of emotion. It is a well written and compelling read -- but most of all, it is the story of a wounded man who has tried for most of his life to outrun his feelings by chasing stories and throwing himself into the middle of the worst wars and disasters.

I remember watching Anderson Cooper's coverage of the tsunami at the end of 2004. Several images stuck in my memory. One was Anderson getting visibly choked up as he reported from the devastated shores of Sri Lanka. The second image is of him playing with a scraggly dog who had survived the tsunami and seemed desperate for some human companionship. It struck me that most big network news anchors would have ordered a producer or someone to get the dog out of the picture.

I was therefore intrigued when I heard that he had written a book of memoirs, and even more so when I learned that the bulk of the content centered on his experiences covering the tsunami, the famine in Niger, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The behind the scenes look at world news as it breaks is very interesting. But much more compelling is Anderson's own chaotic inner life as he struggles to come to terms with his brother's suicide years earlier. The events of 2005 cause everything to come to a head, and the result is this book.

Excerpt:

My final year of college was a blur. I spent most of my time trying to understand what had happened, worried that whatever dark impulse had driven my brother to his death might still be lurking somewhere out there, waiting for me ... I couldn't feel anything at all. I wanted to be someplace where emotions were palpable, where the pain outside matched the pain I was feeling inside.