Paul Farmer has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 9 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Pathologies of Power.

4 audiobooks
Cover art for Pathologies of Power

Pathologies of Power

1 rating

Summary

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life - and death - in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other. Farmer shows that the same social forces that give rise to epidemic diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis also sculpt risk for human rights violations. He illustrates the ways that racism and gender inequality in the United States are embodied as disease and death. Yet this book is far from a hopeless inventory of abuse. Farmer's disturbing examples are linked to a guarded optimism that new medical and social technologies will develop in tandem with a more informed sense of social justice. Otherwise, he concludes, we will be guilty of managing social inequality rather than addressing structural violence.

©2003 The Regents of the University of California (P)2017 Tantor

Narrator: Jack Chekijian
Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
Available on Audible
Cover art for Haiti After the Earthquake

Haiti After the Earthquake

Summary

On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti. Now their project was transformed into a massive international rescue and relief effort. In his own words, Farmer documents this effort, including the harrowing obstacles and the small triumphs. Despite an outpouring of aid, the challenges were astronomical. U.N. plans were crippled by Haiti's fragile infrastructure and the death of U.N. staff members who had been based in Port-au-Prince. In chronicling the relief effort, Farmer draws attention to the social issues that made Haiti so vulnerable to this natural disaster. Yet Farmer's account is not a gloomy catalog of impenetrable problems. As devastating as Haiti's circumstances are, its population manages to keep going. Farmer shows how, even in the barest camps, Haitians organize themselves, creating small businesses such as beauty parlors. His narrative is interwoven with stories from Haitians themselves and from doctors and others working on the ground. Ultimately this is a story of human endurance and humility in difficult circumstances and seemingly overwhelming odds.

©2011 Paul Farmer. Recorded by arrangement with PublicAffairs TM, a member of the Perseus Books Group. (P)2011 (p) 2011 HighBridge Company

Available on Audible
Cover art for To Repair the World

To Repair the World

Summary

Here, for the first time, is a collection of short speeches by the charismatic doctor and social activist Paul Farmer. One of the most passionate and influential voices for global health equity and social justice, Farmer encourages young people to tackle the greatest challenges of our times. Engaging, often humorous, and always inspiring, these speeches bring to light the brilliance and force of Farmer's vision in a single, accessible volume. A must-listen for graduates, students, and everyone seeking to help bend the arc of history toward justice, To Repair the World: Challenges listeners to counter failures of imagination that keep billions of people without access to health care, safe drinking water, decent schools, and other basic human rights Champions the power of partnership against global poverty, climate change, and other pressing problems today Overturns common assumptions about health disparities around the globe by considering the large-scale social forces that determine who gets sick and who has access to health care Discusses how hope, solidarity, faith, and hardbitten analysis have animated Farmer's service to the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Russia, and elsewhere Leaves the listener with an uplifting vision: that with creativity, passion, teamwork, and determination, the next generations can make the world a safer and more humane place.

©2012 The Regents of The University of California (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Available on Audible
Cover art for Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds

Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds

Summary

In 2014, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea suffered the worst epidemic of Ebola in history. The brutal virus spread rapidly through a clinical desert, where basic health-care facilities were few and far between. Causing severe loss of life and economic disruption, the Ebola crisis was a major tragedy of modern medicine. But why did it happen, and what can we learn from it? Paul Farmer, the internationally renowned doctor and anthropologist, experienced the Ebola outbreak firsthand - Partners in Health, the organization he founded, was among the international responders.  In Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds, he offers the first substantive account of this frightening, fast-moving episode and its implications. In vibrant prose, he tells the harrowing stories of Ebola victims while showing why the medical response was slow and insufficient. Rebutting misleading claims about the origins of Ebola and why it spread so rapidly, he traces West Africa’s chronic health failures back to centuries of exploitation and injustice. Under formal colonial rule, disease containment was a priority, but care was not - and the region’s health-care woes worsened, with devastating consequences that Farmer traces up to the present.

©2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Length: 22 hrs and 5 mins
Available on Audible