Tracy Kidder has narrated 3 audiobooks on Listento.it by 1 author. The most-rated is Strength in What Remains.
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