Sunday, January 3, 2010

Book #77: Mountains Beyond Mountains

Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House Reader's Circle)Title: Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World
Author: Tracy Kidder

Paul Farmer is a man with a mission, a man who has likely done more to advance access to medicine in the third world than anyone else in the century, a man worthy of sainthood. But I wouldn't want to be married to him. He works 20-hours days (and has for decades), travels between Boston and Haiti and Russia and Cuba and Peru (is it Peru? I can't remember, it's been a while) and France with great regularity, has at least three full-time jobs (but very little wealth to show for them), and has revolutionized both access to medicine in Haiti and treatment of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis on several continents. He loves what he does, and Kidder does a great job showing both the humanity and the superhumanity of Kidder. It's an interesting book about an interesting man, but reading it both made me feel guilty for the comforts I enjoy and made me feel like a lazy slacker.

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