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Loading... Mountains Beyond Mountainsby Tracy Kidder
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. My brother has been trying to get me to read this for a year, and after the Haiti earthquake I finally checked it out. He was right that it is a page turner. It is a biography of Paul Farmer, a genius who has created an oasis in a poverty stricken area of Haiti to treat patients as well as gone on to fight TB around the world by challenging the accepted ways of dealing with disease and poverty. I struggled with the book. Even Farmer admits in the beginning that what he is doing is pallative. Treating one patient at a time of diseases that mainly afflict people in poverty. Yet he does create communities and schools in the hopes that it will give them more opportunity than sex trade, but in a place like Haiti the goal for most is to find a way out if educated. It feels dismal and I realized when I got to one of the final chapter where he explains that his fight is is a fight of defeat. He will not succeed in treating every patient, but will fight to do it and if that includes a lot of money to change people's circumstances so there is less chance for infectious diseases then he will do it. (  ) strandbooks | Jan 31, 2010 |  One of the best non-fiction books I've read in a long time. Anyone who aspires to be a doctor or wants to re-think their approach to life should read this. (  ) zsms | Jan 30, 2010 | Excellent story that seems to capture the real Paul Farmer -- well written, engaging, nothing sentimental or maudlin, gives the background that explains much of current work that Partners in Health does in the world today. Paul Farmer is seeable and hearable on YouTube videos which adds a very sweet dimension to the book. ( ) grheault | Jan 28, 2010 | What a marvelous book! It is the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, who grew up poor, living for years in a bus with five siblings or on a boat. He grew up with a fierce desire to help people. He got into Harvard medical school, and while there got interested in Haiti and all its severe problems. He went to one of the poorer regions in a poor country, and he has proven over and over that hard work, organization, imagination, good medical practices, personal attention, and some money can make a big difference. Necessarily he and his coworkers became experts in tuberculosis, since it is one of Haiti's major medical problems. They had a lot of success treating drug resistant TB, using a different and more effective regimen than recommended by the World Health Organization. Farmer and his colleagues in Partner in Health became busier than ever, working on TB in Peru and in Russian prisons. Kidder is a terrific writer. He gives a great sense of what an amazing but wholly human character Farmer is, as well as some of his coworkers. The book proves that one person CAN make a difference, but few are as capable as Farmer. Those of us without his talents can but support him however we are able. Well, now I can add another hero to my list. Last year it was Greg Mortenson, profiled in Three Cups of Tea. This year its Paul Farmer - and it is only January! ( ) reannon | Jan 13, 2010 | Inspiring story of how one man can really make a difference in this world. Dr Farmer has described his work battling TB in Haiti (and later Peru and Russia) as "the long defeat", but after reading 'Mountains' I would characterize his accomplishments as just the opposite. This is an inspiring, heartwrenching, interesting and complicated story and Kidder tells it very well. You don't have to be a medical professional to appreciate this book--a definite recommend. (  ) dele2451 | Jan 10, 2010 | 
 ''Mountains Beyond Mountains'' is inspiring, disturbing, daring and completely absorbing. It will rattle our complacency; it will prick our conscience.
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(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:58:29 -0500)
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