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    Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
    Unavailable
    Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
    Unavailable
    Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
    Audiobook (abridged)4 hours

    Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Tracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, and Home Town. He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative." This powerful and inspiring new book shows how one person can make a difference, as Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who is in love with the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it.

    At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life's calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer-brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti-blasts through convention to get results.

    Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity" - a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners In Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.'s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.

    "Mountains Beyond Mountains unfolds with the force of a gathering revelation," says Annie Dillard, and Jonathan Harr says, "[Farmer] wants to change the world. Certainly this luminous and powerful book will change the way you see it."

    Editor's Note

    Book club pick…

    Dr. Paul Farmer seems like a superhuman in his quest to eradicate infectious disease and his work traveling the world to carry out this quest. Journalist Tracy Kidder captures Farmer’s tirelessness in this inspiring biographical book. Author John Green selected “Mountains Beyond Mountains” as his September pick for his book club, Life’s Library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 9, 2003
    ISBN9780739307663
    Unavailable
    Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World

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    Reviews for Mountains Beyond Mountains

    4/5

    1,058 ratings80 reviews

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    • 3/5
      An interesting portrait of Paul Farmer. You get a good sense of Farmer's personality and motivations, with lots of revealing anecdotes. The story falls apart somewhat in the second half, when it becomes more of a travelogue of the author following Farmer around. Farmer is fascinating, but not inspirational to me. I was troubled by a story where his organization decided to spend >$20,000 on airlifting a dying patient to Boston, to die there, when they did not even have a working ambulance. In this case, his staff made the decision, and from the description it seems like they did it more to make themselves feel good than to help the patient. Not making decisions to triage, to economically prioritize spending money to maximize good, might be exactly what makes Farmer inspirational, and therefore effective in raising money. But this style of fundraising seems designed to appeal to people who donate to make themselves feel good, rather than to do good.
    • 4/5
      This gave a pretty decent overview of the medical issues facing Peru, Haiti, and Russia without getting too bogged down in sciences-speak. The background story on different people did nothing to add to the book and merely padded length.
    • 5/5
      Great telling of the history of Dr. Paula Farmer as he fights to solve TB in poverty stricken Haiti as well as other areas of the world. God gave us plenty of resources. He didn't make us share them.
    • 3/5
      If I was rating Paul Farmer, I'd give it 5 stars. The writing gets 3 stars because it didn't keep me engaged. I lost interest half way through and had to force myself to finish.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful book.
    • 5/5
      This was an incredibly inspiring story of one of those people who sees a problem that needs to be solved, and just works to do it. It's about Dr. Paul Farmer, who works primarily within an extremely poverty-stricken area of the central plateau of Haiti, and was one of those books that makes me wish I had the courage to make the sacrifices that type of life requires. It's also a superb book about Haiti in general, its culture and its people. I took this book on holidays with me. It was an inspiring read. Dr. Farmer is an incredible person and the improvements he has made in healthcare worldwide should be widely recognized. I will be keeping an eye out for more information about him and his organization, Partners in Health.
    • 5/5
      An inspiring book about an inspiring man doing hard work where is it most needed, and struggling to do it right.
    • 5/5
      Definitely one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. Farmer's story is fascinating with his wild childhood and improbable path to becoming one of the highest regarded doctors in the world. His insight on poverty and equal medicine is spot on and following his journeys through his beloved Haiti and across the world was extremely insightful and well-documented thanks to Kidder's well-crafted prose. I found myself tearing up a bit as I read about the love so many people have for this man who has dedicated his life to finding cures.
    • 3/5
      I expected to like this book much more than I did. The story of what Paul Farmer did in providing health care in Haiti intrigued me. I did, however, feel the story bogged down in places -- mainly when it got "too medical" or "too political" for a mainstream audience. I'm glad Kidder decided to share Farmer's story with the world; however, it could have been more readable.
    • 4/5
      Interesting book about Paul Farmer, who really seems to be a one-of-a-kind guy, not caring about money and fame but truly interested in helping the poor and needy in Haiti. First 1/2 to 3/4 of the book kept me riveted as it talked about Paul growing up and building this medical free-clinich-ish foundation in Haiti. The last several chapters got a bit dry in all the little nit-picky things that had to be done and how Paul had problem after problem; kinda like the relative who comes to visit and likes to clean, and how cool that is, until it's the 18th week and the guy who liked to clean now seems like an OCD anal-retentive clean-a-holic! But overall worth the read, and maybe even donate if you can.
    • 4/5
      compelling story of Paul Farmer's life and what he did to bring medical care to Haiti. He is a tireless & dedicated physician who has devoted his life to helping poor with diseases as AIDS and T.B. He used methods and techniques out of the usual box of medical care and bureaucracy to get things accomplished along with others like Ophelia Dahl.
    • 5/5
      Nonfiction, a remarkable, unforgetable story about Dr. Paul Farmer, who has inspired many in the world regarding medical care for the poor. He revolutionized the treatment of TB and HIV in a seemingly understated quiet, powerful way. The author is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Dr. Farmer's favorite place to practice is Haiti, so the book is timely now as well. I keep wondering if he was there during the earthquake. This man has made a difference in lives around the world in ways hard to understand unless you read about the connectedness of things in this book.

      I highly recommend it to all. It's awesome, quite literally, as are the people in it.
    • 4/5
      Read for the Life's Library Book Club. This is the story of Paul Farmer and his early life and the creation of his Partners In Health organization. An excellent read that, if nothing else, reminds me that there are still good people in the world that do more than make up for the majority of us slackers.Outside the Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston, you're aware of the relative urban quiet...Even Boston drivers, famously deranged, don't honk much when passing through the neighborhood."I'm very good at spinal taps" he's told me. He seems to be, and besides he's left-handed, and to my eyes left-handers at work have always seemed adroit.How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb: "God gives but doesn't share"One can guess a lot about the economic condition of a country by inspecting the baggage people carry there from the United States, the shopping mall for the poor countries of the world.
    • 4/5
      I deliberately chose to read the "Adapted for Young People" version not because I dislike Tracy Kidder (on the contrary, I generally really enjoy his books) but because I knew this was a subject that would cause me to gnash my teeth, stomp my tiny feet, and rage and rage. Also, I was fully prepared for the idea that I wouldn't necessarily like Dr. Paul Farmer.

      That's two to me.

      Being broke is tough. Being poor when everyone you know is just as poor, and illiterate, and ill, as well as hungry, that's not merely tough, that's deadly. Paul Farmer met Haitian farmworkers while he was a student and Duke. By the time he'd completed his medical and anthropology training at Harvard he was already firmly established as the primary caregiver for the inhabitants of the central plateau of Haiti. Since then he has done astounding work in multi-drug resistant TB treatment and AIDs treatment among the poorest peoples in the world. He's developed widely repeated drug protocols as well as a much-copied healthcare clinic. Everyone should have such a caring and creative doctor.

      And yes, sometimes he is annoying because he has eidetic memory, and only needs to sleep four hours a night, and he is banging his head against stupid bureaucracy, and poor logic, and the worst kind of social injustice, every single day.

      He is, I think, a kind of living saint, a man who has thrown himself entirely and completely into looking after the sick, the poor, the imprisoned. And the authors make it clear that this is hard, hard work. Good on him. He should make us all feel uncomfortable and guilty, because no matter how much good we might do with our lives, we aren't doing as much good as he is.

      Library copy.
    • 4/5
      I've been saving this until I really needed a book this good. I'm glad I did. Kidder's take on Farmer's work and philosophy is energizing, enraging, and engaging. I wish I could have kept reading it forever.
    • 2/5
      A disappointment from an author I usually enjoy. If you're not interested in painstakingly detailed descriptions of medical conditions in Latin America then this book is not for you. Granted, Dr. Farmer is heroic, brilliant and unconventional. And, in truth, I've never gotten very excited by medical stories of any kind. That said, with chapter after chapter describing horrible living conditions, life-threatening epidemics and heroic elf-sacrifice on the part of Dr. Farmer and a few of his colleagues, this book gets redundant very quickly. It would have made a fascinating magazine article, but as a (rather long) book, it's just not compelling.
    • 4/5
      A non fiction after a long time.
      More of a set of memoirs from the author's time with the doctor.

      Wonderful read. Puts everything that the doctor and his team did in perspective.
    • 4/5
      This is a powerful book with a fascinating real life main character - Dr. Paul Farmer. I struggled with it at times because Farmer's political views are so antithetical to my own. I admired his passion and persistance in the face of adversity and evil. However, I thought he shared the (in my view) common liberal misconception that evil is something government can cure and replace with Utopia and that evil in the world is usually the fault of the US.
      Ultimately, Kidder presents Farmer for what he is - a passionate genius who is also a mere mortal - a flawed man who lives a life of contradictions.
    • 5/5
      This is an excellent biography of Dr. Paul Farmer, a physician who is attempting to eliminate death and disease in the third world. The imagery of the book detailing the heart and bravery of Farmer as he attempts to cure the world, and in particular Haiti, Peru and Russia, by individually treating persons as well as globally addressing the diseases they face, mainly TB and AIDS, as well as the conditions that promote those diseases.
    • 3/5
      I'd like to save the world, too. So I'm glad he's got the energy to cover me. lol

      Paul Farmer is a Harvard-trained doctor/anthropologist who specializes in infectious diseases and has a passion for bringing medical treatment to the poor. He first developed an affection for Haiti and determined to bring health care to Haitian poor, opening clinics, providing TB treatment, and even making house calls. He founded Partners in Health, which expanded to bring TB treatment to Peru and Russia. All this while still maintaining his practice in Massachusetts.
    • 4/5
      Dr. Paul Farmer is a man who has spent his adult life trying to bring better health care to poverty-stricken parts of the world, with most of his time spent in Haiti. Farmer's insistence on bringing quality care (not just "appropriate technology," which is shorthand for "inferior" or "whatever we can get away with") to places like Haiti, Peru, and the prisons of Russia is admirable. His relentless travel between countries as well as walking long distances to remote houses to see patients is hard to believe. How any human being could work so much, so consistently, under such difficult conditions, is nearly incomprehensible. His life consists of grant proposals, emails, seeing patients in developing countries, doing rotations in a US hospital, and lecturing at world health conferences. Hobbies? Not noticeably. Sleep? Not much. Personal life? During the time covered in the book, he does have a wife and child - who live in Paris. Farmer's story is one of those that kind of run the risk of paralyzing would-be do-gooders instead of inspiring them. You hear his story and wonder how on earth you could possibly measure up, or wonder how altruistic you really are if you're not willing to sacrifice absolutely everything to make a difference. It seems from the book that Farmer realizes he is one in a million; he doesn't wonder why more people don't do as much as he does - he wonders why more people don't do *anything.* The author does a good job not being awestruck by Farmer; he doesn't canonize him. But Kidder does make it seem ridiculous that world health programs are so slow-moving, and don't work Farmer's way. I'm no expert on the issues, but I'm guessing that like with most things, the true best path lies somewhere in the middle. Or at least it does until each and every person in the world can be convinced to make their own small contribution.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book. Kidder invested a lot of time and effort on this research. Farmer comes across as half saint and half super man. Haitians depicted as real people. Narrator absolutely fabulous!!
    • 4/5
      3.5 starsBefore Paul Farmer became a doctor, he spent some time in Haiti with poor people. He already had an anthropology degree. He realized that helping these people get well was what he wanted to do with his life. And workaholic that he seemed to be (at least doing this, what he loved to do), that’s what he did! And, he started a foundation (Partners in Health) that expanded to Peru and Russia and beyond. They treated mostly TB and HIV. This was good. Impressive, everything he did/does, but at the same time one wonders how he managed/manages to get everything done. He had to also navigate political interactions, as well.
    • 5/5
       I have just finished Mountains Beyond Mountains. What a book! What a man! What a story! This is the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a *Man who would cure the world*, as Tracy Kidder's subtitle says.Paul Farmer first went to Haiti as a young man, before he even became a doctor but in this land of abject poverty, he found his calling. Together with 3 friends, he founded Partners In Health, found a man in Boston, where he went to medical school, Tom White, who was excessively wealthy and wanted to give away his money before he died. A match made in heaven. Farmer went on to become a medical doctor (and got a degree in medical anthropology, redefining that discipline along the way) via a rather unorthodox route, studying part-time, and flying to Haiti, throughout his studies, to actually practise medicine. He went on to teach, to consult, to write and to travel to other impoverished regions of the world to help set up similar health care systems to deal with TB and AIDS and try to stop these pandemics from spreading. Farmer sees his patients as not just *cases*, not just as lists of symptoms, but the anthropologist part of him impels him to see health care as a larger picture; impels him to want to address and fix the things that are the root causes of what's wrong with a system and what causes the breakdowns in the first place. He believes with every cell of his being that all human beings deserve adequate health care, that no life is less valuable than any other. He is only one man, but he has a brilliant mind, boundless energy and his influence, passion and vision have brought many people on board with him. He has almost single-handedly made more of a difference in quality of life, in more places on this planet, than anyone else. But throughout this book I found myself worrying about him; he doesn't get enough sleep (a doctor should know how important sleep is!), he travels so much that I wonder if his family suffers (he is married and has 3 children. Does he ever get to sit down at a table and have dinner together with them? Does he get a chance to read bedtime stories to his kids?). He has written hundreds of articles and many books. He teaches, he lectures, he still doctors, too. There are only 24 hours in a day, no matter where he is. Something has to give. He is pushing 60 now and his schedule is probably more physically taxing than it ever was. How long can he keep it up before it begins to take a toll on him?On one very long trek, author Tracy Kidder illustrated this with some humour: -  "He and Ti Jean confer. They decide we can't walk back the way we came, not across rivers and over steep paths in the dark, without a flashlight. What they mean is they don't think I'd make it. I'm not pleased that they think this but am relieved that they do."Like the recent documentary film on Farmer that I saw (Bending the Arc), this book is never far from my mind. It's the kind of thing that you (I) keep thinking about, and marvelling about. Some quotes by Tracy Kidder, author, near the end of the book, summing it all up:  - (in relation to Paul Farmer hiking 7 hours to make a house call): "I think of the wealthy friend of ...who balked at contributing to PIH because, while he knew about Farmer's work in Haiti and considered it impressive, he doubted anyone could reproduce it. I've heard variations on that theme. Farmer and Kim do things that no one else can do. Zanmi Lasante won't survive Farmer. Partners in Health is an organization that relies too much on a genius....All the serious, sympathetic critiques come down to these two arguments: Hiking into the hills to see just one patient or two is a dumb way for Farmer to spend his time, and even if it weren't, not many other people will follow his example, not enough to make much difference in the world." - "That approach has worked for PIH. And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn't care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He's still going to make these hikes, he'd insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you're saying that their lives matter less than some others', and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world..."That's when I feel most alive, when I am helping people," he told me...He makes these house calls regularly and usually without witnesses... This matters to him, I think - to feel, at least occasionally, that he doctors in obscurity, so that he knows he doctors first of all because he believes it's the right thing to do. "
    • 5/5
      YES! Fuck yes! Fuck, fuck, fuck yes!
    • 5/5
      Tracy Kidder is a genius. MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS is a journalistic portrait of Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health and an extraordinary advocate for the Haitian poor. I admire how Kidder includes just enough of his own sense of intrigue--what makes this guy tick?--and discomfort--how come Farmer makes him feel inadequate?--to hook the reader in what feels like a personal story but in fact is largely biography. This book is a good example of literary journalism.

      Farmer is strongly influenced by liberation theology, but he's brought these principles to bear on the field of medicine, especially the treatment of TB. I found many aspects of his work personally challenging. He remains a doctor dedicated to seeing individual patients, even if this entails 10-hour treks through the central plateau of Haiti, as he grows in prominence and eventually comes to influence national health care systems around the globe. Kidder implies that this groundedness in doctoring individuals is the key to his success. The more he advocates for quality care for individuals, the more Farmer gets into political trouble. Once again, radical love even on a small scale rattles those in power. His story has challenged me to keep my feet firmly planted in the dirty particulars of working with ordinary people while at the same time bringing the insights of this work out to influence a larger sphere. We have a mandate to correct economic and social injustices, Farmer says. How can I take up this mantel as a writer? I've a lot to think about.
    • 1/5
      No plot. This was a bookclub pick - didn't have high hopes.
    • 4/5
      An interesting glimpse into the life of a very selfless being. I am amazed by this Farmer guy. We need to clone him many times over. The book is a great read, until the end. The book attempts to close with a real life anecdote, but it doesn't fit in the chronology of the story. If I was Kidder, I'd have a hard time closing this story too.
    • 5/5
      In this moving biography of Paul Farmer, Tracy Kidder takes us on a world tour of medical missionary work. Farmer started his mission to save the world from tuberculosis one patient at a time in the slums of Haiti. Practically from scratch, he developed a clinic that would treat the poor. But Farmer not only treated his patients, he listened to them, he cared about each one with individual interest, and he provided food and supplies so that his patients wouldn't be saved from tuberculosis only to die of starvation.As his mission in Haiti gained more and more momentum, Farmer's expertise on tuberculosis (especially antibiotic-resistant strains) became world-renowned. He was asked to help set up clinics in Peru. He worked with the health systems of prisons in Russia, where antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis was rampant. And he loved each and every patient, regardless of who they were. While describing the incredible non-stop work of Farmer, Kidder managed to make the doctor more human. I could imagine Farmer, cheerful despite sleep-deprivation shadows under his eyes, flying from one country to another in a worn-down suit that he would never have time to replace. From the book, it seemed that Farmer might pause for hours to have a heart-felt conversation with a patient, even while a room-full of self-important Harvard doctors awaited his arrival. I could empathize with Olivia, Farmer's old flame, who once felt a twinge of satisfaction to realize that Farmer was only human - she could annoy him. Being around someone like that must be exhausting. Kidder painted a brilliant man with limitless energy, unimpeachable morals, and the charisma to make his dreams a reality. I felt overwhelmed just listening to the book. I can't imagine what it must be like to work for him (or date/marry him). And yet, it's impossible for me to not admire him. I found this book fascinating not only because it was a description of an amazing man with a daring love for humanity, but also because I enjoyed learning more about the social/economic conditions of Haiti. The narrative flowed smoothly between Kidder's personal impressions of Farmer and Haiti to well-researched narratives of Farmer's life outside his work. I enjoyed Paul Micheal's narration of the book - though I have little to comment on his style of reading. It was one of those audiobooks that I was so absorbed in the story that I forget to be distracted by the narrator - which means Micheal must have done a good job.
    • 4/5
      You’re not supposed to love this book. To do so would be to fall to the seduction of blind idolatry, and Farmer, the book’s subject, even points out that this is not his goal: the goal isn’t to convince more people to BE like Farmer, but rather to think like him, to believe in what he believes. As a fiction reader/writer who only sporadically dabbles in nonfiction, I find it hard to consolidate the opinions of the two types of readers in me: the one who reads to learn the craft of writing, and the one who wants to be moved by new, eye-opening reading experiences.Research aside, Kidder’s writing style and his way of creating “characters” is simplistic. He basically throws a million details, PIH-er vocabulary, Farmer quotes, and anecdotes at you and essentially commands you to be convincingly immersed in their world. And, if you don’t actually feel immersed, because the words and details on the page are basically deliberately arrhythmic, Kidder and Farmer will give you the steady “are-you-stupid” stare—you don’t get it, do you, because you’re not smart enough to get it, you will never be able to truly understand and get the inner workings of Farmer’s mind and soul.Actually, Kidder addresses this in his book. I think it’s partly the reason for why he actually writes himself as a character into his book: because Paul Farmer is so easy to deify, with his nerdily bemused made-up vocabulary and quips, his grand visions, his inexplicable endless resource of energy, that we mere mortal readers need someone in the book with whom we can connect and empathize. Kidder is not especially likable in the book: he essentially takes on the role of Devil’s advocate and asks Farmer all the questions that we readers are thinking but would never dare admit that we’re thinking: Can you really do what you envision? How can you exist without a solid flow of monetary support? Is it really worthwhile for you to use your time and money to help someone with just a 5% chance of living past age thirty? Kidder places himself as the dumb normal man because that’s how we’re all feeling in the shadow of Farmer. And this leads to one of the ongoing emotional contradictions we have regarding this book: Farmer makes us feel guilty for not ourselves being a part of his cause, and then we feel angry that Farmer is making ourselves feel guilty by example, etc.The debate over the best way to portray Farmer and his work aside (is a print book, with all its limitations and the conscious/subconscious selectivity of language, the best medium through which to convey Farmer’s beliefs and dreams?), the book’s message is one that grows on you, to ultimately become something you go back to, again and again. It doesn’t smack you over the head with itself: for most of the book, I was still struggling between what it is that Farmer and Kidder were trying to make me feel, and to believe in the feasibility of Farmer’s vision, not only as a reader believes in a book’s world but as a frustrated individual believes in the vision’s place in our real world. There are many different things that many different readers can take away from MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS. You could feel ridicule masking insecurity over Farmer’s and PIH’s actions. You could take the book as an inspirational call to arms—and then be stranded because you don’t know how to make the best use of your arms. You can say, that’s nice, this is a nice biography about a nice, good man, and then move on to the next book in your TBR pile. (The book—Farmer and Kidder—also preempts any seemingly original emotional and intellectual responses to itself because it works all these different possible responses into its narrative. The self-awareness of this book is super annoying at times!)What I took away from this book, however, is this: the world is a sucky place, and most of the suckiness is the result of our—humans’—interferences with the natural state of things, by imposing structures and systems on everything and creating disparities. As Farmer says, suffering is a human creation, and then we devise ways to ease that suffering, but only for the people who contributed to the creation of that suffering in the first place. And it’s really easy for us individuals to feel frustrated and helpless in the face of such systems that claim, but fail, to benefit humanity (see: the big mess that is the United States congressional system). But rather than wrap ourselves in that helplessness and frustration, we should believe, first and foremost, in the power of the individual to help others, and then in the power of a collective of like-minded individuals to enact even greater changes, essentially beating the system and establishing their own system that is based upon actual observation and experience at the individual level. This is why Farmer continues to trek seven hours into the central plateau of Haiti in order to call on just one patient: without that focus on the individual, PIH’s system will become like every other system in history and the world that has failed in its missives, tangled up in bureaucracy and financial economy and the like. Focusing on the individual is doable, and essential, and I can do it, and you can do it, and everyone can do it, and this dream that the world can be an inexplicably better place, however opaque the path there is.