Book Review: Mountians Beyond Mountains

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

A biography on the life and work of Paul Farmer, a doctor in Haiti as well as the founder of Partners in Health. Paul Farmer is currently working to eradicate the world of Multiple Drug Resistant TB, AIDS and social inequality. This book will inspire and change you.

Quotes from Farmer:

"People from our background... we're used to being on a victory team, and actually what we're really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it's not worth it. So you fight the long defeat."

"I'm glad we came, because now we know how grim it is and we can intervene aggressively."

"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world."

Review and Comments follow.



Mountains Beyond Mountains came with an inspiring recommendation from my roommate after discussing my aspirations to work with international health. This book was a godsend, as my current unemployment and exhausting job search has left me wanting for something more substantial and meaningful in my professional career. After finishing this book yesterday, my palms were slightly sweaty, my heart was pumping fast, and I was ready to spend my dwindling savings on a one-way plane ticket to the impoverished country of my choice. I fought back the urge to strand myself in the third world and instead decided to look into a Masters Degree in Medical Anthropology when the time comes to pursue more education. However, step one of Katie's Plan to Save the World is to get into and finish nursing school. Step zero is to find a way to pay the bills and eat while still holding on to my soul. I submitted seven applications today and feel hopeful about Step Zero.

Paul Farmer has lead an inspiring although completely unrepeatable life. As standard to biographies, Mountains Beyond Mountains explores the childhood, education, and experience to find the formula that forms a person into a mover and shaker. This book also investigates the current work and life of Paul Farmer in Haiti as well as other countries around the world. Internationally, Farmer's organization, Partners in Health, works to eradicate the world of drug resistant tuberculosis and AIDS. On a personal and professional level, Farmers works to eradicate the world of social injustice.

While Farmer's life feels unrepeatable for the nine-to-five professionals we are sometimes forced to be, he carries a philosophy about his life that if applied in even small doses would change the world. Our lives encourage ambivalence toward those in need. We quantify our relationships with people in terms of the economic exchange we are forced to live within and out on a daily basis. Farmer's philosophy compromises the safety of calculated risk in our relationships and calls us to be more than ambivalent toward the people around us. At one point in the book, in regards to a medical intervention that many are claiming a waste of time and resources, Farmer responds, "The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world" (p 294).

Farmer exposes ways we are subject to unknown oppression of the severely poor and calls us to do something about it. For this reason, this book has the power to change the lives of every reader should we chose to let it. Although I am still two to three years out of working internationally, I want to make a point to devote a certain amount of time and money to organizations that make a difference in the lives of the poor and oppressed. I want to recognize the suffering of the people around me and do everything in my power to alleviate it, even if those solutions are not always rational or cost effective. As Margaret Mead says in a very memorable quote, "Never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed individuals to change the world. Indeed, they are the only ones who ever have."

How will you change your world?

I dare you to try.