Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Mortenson, think Forrest Gump but with an ego tall as the Himalayas, builds a school in Pakistan (the chief obstacle being his own boneheadedness) and realizes he's found the key to world peace. He is not at all modest. The writing is absolutely awful and the premise, based on missionary zeal and arrogance, is moronic: erecting school buildings in the Muslim world will destroy radical Islam. Facts are always a little shaky, and nothing really tracks. Jean Hoerni, who donates money is said to have founded Intel. (p.54) Not true. Mortenson mentions he taught his sister about birth control (p.8) then later (p.43) says he had a nurse teach her about it. In California in 1993 he painfully pecks out letters asking for money on a rented typewriter because he'd never heard about word processing on a computer. Later it occurs to him the lack of response was possibly because he didn't provide a return address. Even simple math fails: Mortenson spends "two-thirds" of $12,000 on materials giving him $3,000 left over for labor. (p.72) Judging him to be irresponsible -- perhaps it's his bookkeeping -- the benefactor's widow withdraws support. Then 9/11 comes along and Mortenson realizes how essential he is to the war on terror. Parade Magazine does a cover story on him. A star is born. Intelligent readers will want to tear out special pages and put them through the shredder as they go. Page 40 was my favorite to shred: Mortenson joins the Army "...while most of his (soft, pampered, high school) classmates were sleeping in during the summer before college..." Who ever heard of going into the service after high school? Mortenson, at least, feels his signing up is extraordinary and he's pretty pleased with himself. He's sent to Germany with the Thirty-third Armored Division, (no record of any such division.) where the White soldiers spend weekends "catching the clap, getting drunk or shooting up." (no weekend duty in the elusive 33rd) while the Black soldiers "catch flights...to Rome or London or Amsterdam" to avail themselves of Europe's cultural heritage. You really need to read the whole page before sending it through. My next buy from Amazon will be a biography of P.T. Barnum to help me understand how so many rubes could be convinced to give a bungling, irresponsible oaf (nice guy that he may be) money or rate the book 5 stars.