Tracy Kidder has 9 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 8 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 60 ratings. The most-rated is The Soul of a New Machine.
The Soul of a New Machine
Summary
Computers have changed since 1981, when Tracy Kidder memorably recorded the drama, comedy, and excitement of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations. The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the 20th century.
©2011 Tracy Kidder (P)2016 Hachette Audio
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Summary
“[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 Today) 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. 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.” (Publishers Weekly [starred review]) “[A] skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.” (Kirkus Reviews [starred review])
©2003 Tracy Kidder (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Summary
“[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 Today) 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. 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)
©2013 Tracy Kidder and Michael French (P)2013 Listening Library
House
Summary
Why on earth should the nail-by-nail building of a house hold any fascination for anyone? Because when you put a lawyer, an architect, and a hippie builder together, that spells trouble. Kidder tells his story so well that you can’t help but take sides.
©1985 John Tracy Kidder (P)1986 Recorded Books, LLC
A Truck Full of Money
Summary
“A perfectly executed, exquisitely reported parable of the Internet age and the wild, mad adventure that is start-up culture.” (Charles Duhigg) Fortune, mania, genius, philanthropy - the best-selling author of Mountains Beyond Mountains gives us the inspiring story of Paul English, the founder of Kayak.com and Lola. Tracy Kidder, the "master of the nonfiction narrative" (The Baltimore Sun) and author of the best-selling classic The Soul of a New Machine, now tells the story of Paul English, a kinetic and unconventional inventor and entrepreneur who as a boy rebelled against authority. Growing up in working-class Boston, English discovered a medium for his talents the first time he saw a computer. As a young man, despite suffering from what would eventually be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, he began his pilgrim's journey through the ups and downs in the brave new world of computers. Relating to the Internet as if it were an extension of his own mind, he discovered that he had a talent for conceiving innovative enterprises and building teams that can develop them, becoming "a Pied Piper" of geeks. His innovative management style, success, and innate sense of fair play inspire intense loyalty. Early on, one colleague observed, "Someday this boy's going to get hit by a truck full of money, and I'm going to be standing beside him". Yet when English did indeed make a fortune - when the travel website Kayak was sold for almost $2 billion - the first thing he thought about was how to give the money away: "What else would you do with it?" The second thing he thought was, "What's next?" With the power of a consummate storyteller, Tracy Kidder casts a fresh, critical, and often humorous eye on the way new ideas and new money are reshaping our culture and the world. A Truck Full of Money is a mesmerizing portrait of an irresistibly endearing man who is indefatigable, original, and as unpredictable as America itself. Praise for A Truck Full of Money “Kidder’s prose glides with a figure skater’s ease, but without the glam. His is a seemingly artless art, like John McPhee’s, that conceals itself in sentences that are necessary, economical, and unpretentious.” (The Boston Globe) “Kidder’s portrayal of living with manic depression is as nuanced and intimate as a reader might ever expect to get.... You can’t help admiring Mr. English and cheering for him.” (The New York Times)
©2016 Tracy Kidder (P)2016 Random House Audio
Old Friends
Summary
Tracy Kidder won the Pulitzer Prize for
The Soul of a New Machine.
House and
Among Schoolchildren were national best sellers. Now this "crackerjack reporter with a common touch" (Philip Lopate,
The Washington Post) has turned his talents to his most important and universal theme in this, a close-in study of old age in America. With care and exactitude, with the human compassion and humor for which he is famed, Kidder opens up a fascinating world to us that is, at the same time, foreign and compelling.
The narrative takes place entirely in a nursing home and focuses on two old men struggling with their circumstances, their memories, and their mortality.
©1994 Tracy Kidder (P)2008 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Summary
“[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 Today) 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. 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)
©2003 Tracy Kidder (P)2003 Random House Audio
My Detachment
Summary
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.
©2005 Tracy Kidder (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
Strength in What Remains
Summary
Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the best sellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the enduring classic Mountains Beyond Mountains, has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative". In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man's remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him; a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances. Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, plagued by horrific dreams, he lands at JFK airport with 200 dollars, no English, and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park, and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing. Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as he travels with Deo back over a turbulent life in search of meaning and forgiveness. An extraordinary writer, Tracy Kidder once again shows us what it means to be fully human by telling a story about the heroism inherent in ordinary people, a story about a life based on hope.
©2009 Tracy Kidder (P)2009 Random House