Bøger af Tracy Kidder

As a medical student, Dr Paul Farmer found his life's calling: to cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine - so readily available in the developed world - to those who need them most. The author's account shows how, from achieving this modest dream, one person can make a difference in solving global problems.

My Detachment is a war story like none you have ever read before, an unromanticized portrait of a young man coming of age in the controversial war that defined a generation. In an astonishingly honest, comic, and moving account of his tour of duty in Vietnam, master storyteller Tracy Kidder writes for the first time about himself. This extraordinary memoir is destined to become a classic.Kidder was an ROTC intelligence officer, just months out of college and expecting a stateside assignment, when his orders arrived for Vietnam. There, lovesick, anxious, and melancholic, he tried to assume command of his detachment, a ragtag band of eight more-or-less ungovernable men charged with reporting on enemy radio locations. He eventually learned not only to lead them but to laugh and drink with them as they shared the boredom, pointlessness, and fear of war. Together, they sought a ghostly enemy, homing in on radio transmissions and funneling intelligence gathered by others. Kidder realized that he would spend his time in Vietnam listening in on battle but never actually experiencing it. With remarkable clarity and with great detachment, Kidder looks back at himself from across three and a half decades, confessing how, as a young lieutenant, he sought to borrow from the tragedy around him and to imagine himself a romantic hero. Unrelentingly honest, rueful, and revealing, My Detachment gives us war without heroism, while preserving those rare moments of redeeming grace in the midst of lunacy and danger. The officers and men of My Detachment are not the sort of people who appear in war movies-they are the ones who appear only in war, and they are unforgettable.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2023.

The powerful story of an inspiring doctor who made a difference, by helping to create a program to care for Boston's homeless community--by the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains Tracy Kidder has been described by The Baltimore Sun as a "master of the nonfiction narrative." In Rough Sleepers, Kidder shows how one person can make a difference, as he tells the story of Dr. Jim O'Connell, a gifted man who invented ways to create a community of care for a city's unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets--the "rough sleepers." When Jim O'Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn't refuse. But that year turned into his life's calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O'Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this illuminating book we travel with O'Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city's most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls "a system of friends." Much as he did with Paul Farmer in Mountains Beyond Mountains, Kidder explores how a small but dedicated group of people have changed countless lives by facing one of American society's difficult problems instead of looking away.

In the New York Times bestseller House, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder takes readers to the heart of the American Dream: the building of a family's first house with all its day-to-day frustrations, crises, tensions, challenges, and triumphs.In Kidder's "remarkable piece of craftsmanship in itself" (Chicago Tribune), constructing a staircase or applying a coat of paint becomes a riveting tale of conflicting wills, the strength and strain of relationships, and pride in skills. With drama, sensitivity, and insight, he takes us from blueprints to moving day, shedding light on objects usually taken for granted and creating a vivid cast of memorable characters in the process."The making of a house is a strange blend of dreams and mundane work, of heaven and earth, and Mr. Kidder has explained it."—New York Times Book Review

"When he graduated from Harvard Medical School, Jim O'Connell was asked by the medical school Dean to spend one year setting up a program to care for the homeless population in Boston. It became Jim O'Connell's life calling, to help people known as "rough sleepers." For the past three decades, Dr. O'Connell has run the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program, which he helped to create. Affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, the program includes clinics and a van on which Dr O'Connell and his staff ride through the Boston streets at night, offering outreach of medical care, socks, soup, and friendship to a marginalized community"--

"[A] masterpiece . . . an astonishing book that will leave you questioning your own life and political views . . . Kidder opens a window into Farmer's soul, letting the reader peek in and see what truly makes the good doctor tick."-Nicholas Thomas, USA TodayIn 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. Tracy Kidder's magnificent account shows how one person can make a difference in solving global health problems through a clear-eyed understanding of the interaction of politics, wealth, social systems, and disease. Profound and powerful, Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes people's minds through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity."Praise for Mountains Beyond Mountains"A true-to-life fairy tale, one that inspires you to believe in happy endings . . . Its stark sense of reality comes as much from the grit between the pages as from the pure gold those pages spin."-Laura Claridge, Boston Sunday Globe"Stunning . . . Mountains Beyond Mountains will move you, restore your faith in the ability of one person to make a difference in these increasingly maddening, dispiriting times."-John Wilkens, The San Diego Union-Tribune"Easily the most fascinating, most entertaining and, yes, most inspiring work of nonfiction I've read this year."-Charles Matthews, San Jose Mercury News"It'll fill you equally with wonder and hope."-Cathy Burke, People"In this excellent work, Pulitzer Prize-winner Kidder immerses himself in and beautifully explores the rich drama that exists in the life of Dr. Paul Farmer. . . . Throughout, Kidder captures the almost saintly effect Farmer has on those whom he treats."-Publisher's Weekly (starred review)"[A] skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

In this "grand vision of a small place" ("People"), bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder creates a richly layered and unforgettable portrait of life in Northampton, Massachusetts, the quintessentially American hometown.

Tracy Kidder -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine and the extraordinary national bestseller House -- spent nine months in Mrs. Zajac's fifth-grade classroom in the depressed "Flats" of Holyoke, Massachusetts. For an entire year he lived among twenty schoolchildren and their indomitable, compassionate teacher -- sharings their joys, their catastrophes, and their small but essential triumphs. As a result, he has written a revealing, remarkably poignant account of education in America . . . and his most memorable, emotionally charged, and important book to date.