September 21, 2007

Author TRACY KIDDER

Author Tracy Kidder meets with students in the Faculty Room after classes. (Photo by Maddy Bloch)

Author Tracy Kidder Spends Day at Taft

Mountains Beyond Mountains, the book selected for the all-school read last summer, may be about a doctor who sets out to cure the world, but there was a large buzz on campus this week for the chance to meet the Pulitzer Prize winner who documents his story.

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. He helped found the organization Partners in Health, which has led the worldwide fight against tuberculosis and AIDS prevention.

The New York Times calls the book "inspiring, disturbing, daring and completely absorbing. It will rattle our complacency; it will prick our conscience."

Kidder explains that Farmer's message "is to pay attention to the world as it really is…. Don't join what often seems like America's collective amnesia toward the suffering that can seem so distant but that in fact surrounds us. Don't forget about the forgotten people in this world…. We are all human beings."

Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy Kidder is 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 nonfiction narrative.” Mountains Beyond Mountains 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.

Although much of his talk focused on Farmer's work and topics raised by the book, Kidder ended his remarks with some advice of his own:

"There is no skill you can acquire that can't be used, one way or another, to improve the world," Kidder explains. "If at least part of the time you get your mind off yourself and out in to the world, the work of school gets easier. You do the work, but for a larger purpose. And if one of your goals is to find a way to improve the world, then you I don't think you have to do worry a great deal about improving yourself. If you begin do the first thing then you will, by my definition anyway, have already begun to do the second."

Kidder spoke about his book and the work of Dr. Farmer at Morning Meeting in Bingham Auditorium, visited classes, and met with interested students at an open session in the faculty room in the afternoon.

Other speakers and events are planned throughout the coming school year to celebrate the theme of Global Leadership and Service introduced by Mountains Beyond Mountains.