I used to climb mountains a lot; I decided to go to Pakistan to climb K2, the world's second-highest mountain. I didn't get quite to the top.

I think Americans yearn for other alternatives to peace, than the path our government has currently taken, and perhaps why there is great interest in this book, and the message to fight poverty and ignorance with education.

There is still a desperate need for investment and promotion of education in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Official figures put Pakistan literacy rate over 45%, but in many rural areas we work it is about 10-15%, and for girls even lower.

When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.

In Muslim societies, a person who has been manipulated unto believing in extremist violence or terrorism often seeks the permission of his mother before he may join a militant jihad and educated women as a rule, tend to withhold their blessings from such things.

I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.

I'm no military expert, and these figures might not be exactly right,' I said. 'But as best I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles, tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced, non extremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?