Nearly everyone in the county is reading “Three Cups of Tea” — the saga of mountain climber turned school-building philanthropist and education advocate Greg Moretenson … are you?

Actually, it seems more like almost everyone in the world is picking up this story of “One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time.” It’s garnered numerous awards including Time Magazine’s Asia Book of the Year, People magazine’s Critic’s Choice and the prestigious 2007 Kiriyama Nonfiction Book Award.

It’s been at No. 2 on the Book Sense independent bookstores’ bestseller list for the past four months, and a few universities across the country have utilized it for campus-wide reading projects. Mortenson himself has been asked to speak on his experiences at the Pentagon, the Deptartment of Defense and other national think tanks in addition to libraries, universities, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, women’s organizations and more across the country.

Here in Kitsap, following a charge that began on Bainbridge Island under the name “Bainbridge and Beyond Reads,” local independent bookshops across the county have featured “Three Cups of Tea” in their stores, book groups and personal collections in an attempt to get the entire county reading the same text.

The story is of a man who has devoted his life to building schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, near the geographical heart of what President Bush called “The Axis of Evil.”

“Education saves lives and builds bridges for indigenous societies isolated by illiteracy, and ultimately could be our most effective tool to ‘win’ the perpetual, spiraling war on terror,” Mortenson said.

He’ll be coming to the island to speak at 7 p.m. Sept. 26 at Bainbridge High School — 9330 NE High School Rd. — to culminate the Bainbridge and Beyond Reads’ quest.

The quest behind “Three Cups of Tea” began on a stone cold slab of ice in the Himalayas in 1993.

Mortenson was there with a group of 12 climbers, hailing from a range of different nationalities in an attempt to summit K2, the world’s second largest mountain, and arguably one of the toughest to climb. He had come in the memory of his deceased sister Christa, hoping to leave a necklace of hers at the peak.

Due to painfully extenuating circumstances he didn’t make the summit.

He actually found himself lost, alone and partially frozen in a craggy life-threatening conundrum on the descent. But from that stage which is titled “Failure” in the first chapter of the book, Mortenson would find an even bigger platform to memorialize Christa — a revolution.

“You can drop bombs, you can hand out condoms, you can build roads, you can put in electricity but until the girls are educated, the world won’t change,” he said.

He was rescued by villagers from a small high-altitude called Korphe who had never seen a foreigner before. They took him in, gave him shelter, food and a tour of their digs. When Mortenson saw what the children of the tribe had for a school, he was mortified.

The children were gathered with no teacher (they shared a teacher with the next village over who was therefore only present on certain days) practicing their multiplication tables in the dirt with sticks.

Mortenson who’d been brought up with two educators as parents, promised the people of Korphe he would return and repay them by building a school.

“Everywhere I go there is a fierce desire for education,” he said.

After returning to America and giving up literally everything he had, all the way down to the Buick named “La Bamba,” which he had been living in, Mortenson returned much to the villagers’ surprise, with school supplies in hand.

The first school was finished in 1996 and as of 2007, Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute (which he started) has established 58 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 24,000 children — including 14,000 girls — where few to no opportunities existed before.

And he’s brought the message back to America, speaking in some 150 schools in the last three years.

“Education in general is a powerful tool to provide alternatives to the illiterate, impoverished areas that are the recruiting grounds for terror,” Mortenson said.

Mortenson and the folks behind Bainbridge and Beyond Reads — the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council, Eagle Harbor Book Company, Kitsap Regional Libraries and the Bainbridge School District – will be making BIHS recruiting grounds for peace when he comes to speak

Sept. 26.

What is absolutely fantastic about this book is that it overwhelmingly supports the theory, in a real-life context, that knowledge is more powerful than bullets.

It also goes to show that one man really can change the world.

For more information, contact the BIAHC at www.artshum.org/(206) 842-7901 or contact your local book store or library.