Non-Fiction Book Club to Discuss "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder - Thursday, June 5, at 6:30PM
Our Non-Fiction book club met again last night to discuss the polarizing work of experimental non-fiction (poetic realism?) that is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans. I want to thank all in attendance for their contribution to yet another interesting conversation.
The book we will be discussing next month (June 6, at 6:30pm) is Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. We will be skipping July this year as the first Thursday falls on the 3rd of the month and that is too close to the holiday for a great turnout. Skipping a month affords us the great pleasure of digging into a larger monograph work (known in the NF Book Club world as a BIG one) we’re talking 500 pages plus. SO, on the first Thursday of August, we’ll be discussing John McPhee’s mammoth Annals of the Former World.
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World
Discussion – Thursday, June 6, 2014 – 6:30PM
Book Description and Author Biography from the Author’s Website:
This compelling and inspiring book shows how one person can work wonders. In Mountains Beyond Mountains, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tracy Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who loves the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it.
In medical school, Paul Farmer found his life’s calling: to cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. Kidder’s magnificent account 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.” 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.
About the Author:
Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Strength in What Remains,Mountains Beyond Mountains,My Detachment, Home Town,Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder lives in Massachusetts and Maine.
Copies of both books (Kidder’s & McPhee’s) Â are available for patrons to borrow at the first floor information desk, or you can reserve your copy by contacting the Community Planning Department at 978-674-1542 or sthibodeau@mvlc.org.