David Oliver Relin

"We Americans need to learn from our mistakes, from the flailing, ineffective way we, as a nation, conducted the 'war-on-terror' after the attacks of 9/11, and from the way we’ve failed to make our case to the moderate, peace-loving majority of people at the heart of the Muslim World. If we want to heal the wounded relationship between Islam and the West, we have to learn how to wage peace as aggressively as we wage war."  

—David Oliver Relin

For two decades, award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin has focused on reporting social issues and their effect on children, both in the U.S. and around the world.

In his bestselling and award-winning book, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, Relin tells the stirring tale of Greg Mortenson, an American mountain climber and nurse who becomes an unlikely champion of education through the accidental relationship he developed with a remote village in Pakistan while recovering from a failed attempt to summit K2.

"Three Cups of Tea is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time. Greg Mortenson’s dangerous and difficult quest to build schools in the wildest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only a thrilling read, it’s proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world."

—Tom Brokaw

Through this incredible account of humanitarian endeavor, Mortenson and Relin offer hope by suggesting that collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education in Pakistan and Afghanistan—particularly for girls—can be one of the most effective means of countering Islamic extremism in the region.

"The root causes of terrorism are not extremists named Osama or Saddam. The real enemies are poverty and ignorance. Through education and economic opportunity you can offer a child enough hope, a bright enough future, that the lure of their life is stronger than the appeal of a martyr's violent death. One 250-pound smart bomb costs about $25,000. One Afghan or Pakistani primary school, built by the Central Asia Institute, costs the same amount of money, and will provide thousands of students with a balanced, nonextremist education for decades. Which, in the long run, do you really think will make us safer?"

—David Oliver Relin

Three Cups of Tea has captivated readers and is being discussed at campus-wide readings and in community one-book events across the nation.  A runaway New York Times bestseller, in 2007 it was also selected as Time Magazine’s Asia Book Of The Year and as a Critic’s Choice by People Magazine. It was also awarded the 2007 Kiriyama Prize for nonfiction and chosen as the 2007 Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Book Of The Year.

In his work as an investigative journalist, Relin has long been committed to increasing awareness about critical human rights issues.  His interviews with child soldiers (including a profile of teenager Ishmael Beah, who would later write the bestseller A Long Way Gone) have been included in Amnesty International reports, and his investigation into the way the INS abused children in its custody contributed to the reorganization of that agency.

David Oliver Relin is a graduate of Vassar and was awarded the prestigious Teaching/Writing Fellowship at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. After Iowa, he received a Michener Fellowship to support his groundbreaking 1992 bicycle trip the length of Vietnam. He spent two additional years reporting about Vietnam while based in the nation's former imperial capital. In addition to Vietnam and Pakistan, he has traveled to and reported from much of East Asia.  He has been a Contributing Editor for Parade and over the years he has won dozens of national awards for his work as both an editor and investigative reporter.

Relin’s next book chronicles the work of two doctors doing groundbreaking surgeries to cure cataract-related blindness in the developing world. See How They Shine is slated for publication by Random House in 2012.  He is currently at work on new writing projects and feels lucky to make his home in Portland, Oregon.