Three Cups of Tea

Title: Three Cups of Tea
Author: Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
ISBN: 0670034827


Plot Summary: Greg Mortenson, a young American mountain climber, becomes stranded in a remote Pakistani village while attempting to climb K2. After the villagers nurse him back to health, he comes to see how the village childrens' lack of education has negatively impacted their community. Promising to come back and help them build and finance a school, he sells his possessions back in the United States and begins the long, arduous process of securing funding, materials, construction, teachers, and materials for the school. This quest eventually turns into an organization devoted to building non-denominational schools for boys and girls alike across areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan that are most subject to targeting by terrorist organizations looking for recruits. Although outnumbered and outfinanced by the Taliban and Al Quaeda, Mortensen's Central Asia Institute begins to bring about positive change in these remote, unstable areas.

Little Brother

Title: Little Brother
Author: Cory Doctorow
ISBN: 0765319853

Plot Summary: Marcus is a high school student in the San Francisco of the near, dystopian future. His every move is tracked electronically, either by cameras, bar codes, computers, or even the free laptop computers distributed by his school. But he is a computer genius, and he and his friends Jolu, Van and Darryl have determined a number of ways to beat the system. That is, until they all get caught in the midst of a terrorist attack on the city and are detained by the Department of Homeland Security. In the aftermath of the event, his subsequent "enhanced interrogation," and the disappearance of one of his friends Marcus becomes determined to beat the DHS at their own game, with his other friends as sometimes unwilling accomplices.