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15+ Works 13,559 Members 413 Reviews 30 Favorited

About the Author

Tracy Kidder was educated at the University of Iowa and Harvard University. He served in the US Army in Vietnam. Kidder has garnered numerous literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize in General Non-Fiction and the National Book Award for General Nonfiction both in 1982. He has also been honored show more with the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, 1990 and the Christopher Award, 1990. His publications include numerous nonfiction articles and short fiction for The Atlantic and other periodicals. Non-Fiction books include The Road to Yuba City, Doubleday, 1974; The Soul of a New Machine, Atlantic Monthly-Little Brown, 1981 for which he won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award; House, Houghton Mifflin, 1985; Old Friends, Houghton Mifflin, 1993; Home Town, Random House, 1999; Mountains Beyond Mountains, Random House, 2003; My Detachment, Random House, 2005; Strength in What Remains, Random House, 2009. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: By Bill O'Donnell - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28890986

Works by Tracy Kidder

Associated Works

The Best American Science Writing 2001 (2001) — Contributor — 132 copies
Granta 44: The Last Place on Earth (1993) — Contributor — 125 copies
Granta 38: We're So Happy! (1991) — Contributor — 113 copies
Autumn: A Spiritual Biography of the Season (2004) — Contributor — 57 copies

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2010 (45) Africa (117) architecture (112) biography (705) Burundi (116) business (105) computer science (43) computers (211) computing (58) construction (46) education (147) essays (56) fiction (112) genocide (90) Haiti (321) health (76) health care (50) history (222) human rights (47) immigrants (56) Massachusetts (95) medical (51) medicine (303) memoir (173) non-fiction (1,395) own (44) Paul Farmer (95) Peru (43) poverty (104) public health (98) read (125) Rwanda (50) science (110) sociology (89) teaching (47) technology (155) to-read (576) tuberculosis (56) unread (85) writing (95)

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Reviews

Tracy Kidder can always tell a story in his writing and we are eventually focused primarily on Tony, an in and out Rough Sleeper who plays such a central roll in Dr. Jim O'Connell's truly incredible work trying to help the homeless in Boston. I kept wondering if maybe, instead of trying to house the homeless in apartments, at least many of them would be better off in a home situaiton....the way some elderly people are now being put in group homes, with someone in charge...kind of like a housemother, with family meals as well as medical issues tended to. Leaving the streets cuts them off from their friends who are experiencing the same street life and apartment isolation becomes impossible. Absolutely no easy answers to problems that arise from so many different situations, but often originate in truly horrific childhoods.… (more)
 
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nyiper | 13 other reviews | Mar 12, 2024 |
A very interesting, enjoyable and thought provoking book.
It narrowly escapes being a hagiography, but leaves you wondering if, perhaps, it should have been one.
The real life saint at the center is presented as complex and having flaws, sort of…
Almost like a normal human being.
The reporter presents himself as a character, without inserting too much of himself and fairly portraying his occasional bouts of cynicism or whininess.
A truly excellent work of journalism
 
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cspiwak | 146 other reviews | Mar 6, 2024 |
My big questions is “How do people like that become who they are?? The energy, focus, intelligence, drive, etc doesn’t just happen. Also, I really think Paul worked himself to death. I think he couldn’t even imagine ever ending his life’s work and the thought of running out of energy and slowly failing wasn’t part of his being. So he died in the field doing what he loved.
I've heard the distance between genius and insanity is a very thin line. Paul Farmer definitely vacillated between the two!… (more)
 
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jemisonreads | 146 other reviews | Jan 22, 2024 |
I'm sure some people will bypass this book because the subject is about the genocide in Burundi and Rwanda, which is not exactly relaxing reading material. (Actually I would have bypassed it too if I hadn't read a good review somewhere or other.) But it's also a true and wonderfully hopeful story of kindness and survival. Deogratias, who escaped from the genocide via an Aeroflot flight, spoke no English, had never been out of Burundi, and arrived in NYC alone with only his nightmarish memories and $200 in his pocket. The book slips back and forth between his life in the US and his life growing up in Burundi until the horrific civil war forced him to run. I'm still digesting this story ... it raises all kinds of questions and thoughts about cultures, good and evil, poverty, wealth, kindness to strangers, education ... it's a great book and well worth reading (so good in fact that I read it in one day.)… (more)
 
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ellink | 87 other reviews | Jan 22, 2024 |

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Works
15
Also by
9
Members
13,559
Popularity
#1,708
Rating
4.0
Reviews
413
ISBNs
163
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9
Favorited
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