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4.2 AVERAGE
4.2 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
as a critique of the book - read the Afterwords about halfway through the book, it helps to but the story in context.
as an story, we can only hope that there is a little Paul Farmer in each of us - if we all gave a fraction of what he gives, the world would be a better place.
as an story, we can only hope that there is a little Paul Farmer in each of us - if we all gave a fraction of what he gives, the world would be a better place.
emotional
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
Yikes, ugh, wow, phew. I very much appreciated the author's acknowledgement of discomfort, annoyance, and absurdity. This helped the book seem less like idealistic dogma, and more real.
My rating is closer to 4.5. Mountains Beyond Mountains is the inspiring story of Paul Farmer, a doctor from a humble background who has done great, great things in the field of health care, particularly in Haiti and other areas of severe poverty. This book had been on my shelf for a while; I picked up the paperback edition somewhere for $1.50, which turned out to be a great investment!
Tracy Kidder tells Farmer's story honestly; he is an excellent writer. I will look for more of his books.
"...How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb:...in literal translation, 'God gives but doesn't share.' This meant, as Farmer would later explain it, 'God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.' Liberation theologians had a similar answer, 'You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that's where He is.' Liberation theology, with its emphasis on the horrors of poverty and on redressing them in the here and now, its emphasis on service and remediation, seemed to fit the circumstances of Haiti. And it suited Farmer temperamentally because, for all his scholarship and interest in theories, his strongest impulses were pragmatic. He only seemed like a nerd. He would tell me years later, with undeniable accuracy, 'I'm an action kind of guy.'" (79)
It (Cuba) was a poor country, and made that way at least in part by the United States' long embargo, yet when the Soviet Union had dissolved and Cuba had lost both its patron and most of its foreign trade, the regime had listened to the warning of epidemiologists and had actually increased expenditures on public health. By American standards Cuban doctors lacked equipment, and even by Cuban standards they were poorly paid, but they were generally well-trained, and Cuba had more of them per capita than any other country in the world- more than twice as many as the United States. Everyone, it appeared, had access to their services, and to procedures like open heart surgery. Indeed, according to a study by WHO, Cuba had the most equitably distributed medicine. Moreover, Cuba seemed to have mostly abandoned its campaign to change the world by exporting troops. Now they were sending doctors instead, to dozens of poor countries. About five hundred Cuban doctors worked gratis in Haiti now - not very effectively, because they lacked equipment, but even as a gesture it meant a lot to Farmer." (194)
"...No question that Cuba had pulled off something difficult and, in the view from Haiti, enviable -first-rate public health, equitably distributed, in spite of severely limited resources. I [Kidder] just wondered what price in political freedom its people had paid for that achievement. But I understood that Farmer would frame the question differently, and ask what price most people would be willing to pay for freedom from illness and premature death. For me, Cuba posed a rather abstract question. For Farmer, it represented hope, proof that a poor country could achieve good public health..." (208)
"If you do the right thing well, you avoid futility." (295)
Tracy Kidder tells Farmer's story honestly; he is an excellent writer. I will look for more of his books.
"...How could a just God permit great misery? The Haitian peasants answered with a proverb:...in literal translation, 'God gives but doesn't share.' This meant, as Farmer would later explain it, 'God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.' Liberation theologians had a similar answer, 'You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that's where He is.' Liberation theology, with its emphasis on the horrors of poverty and on redressing them in the here and now, its emphasis on service and remediation, seemed to fit the circumstances of Haiti. And it suited Farmer temperamentally because, for all his scholarship and interest in theories, his strongest impulses were pragmatic. He only seemed like a nerd. He would tell me years later, with undeniable accuracy, 'I'm an action kind of guy.'" (79)
It (Cuba) was a poor country, and made that way at least in part by the United States' long embargo, yet when the Soviet Union had dissolved and Cuba had lost both its patron and most of its foreign trade, the regime had listened to the warning of epidemiologists and had actually increased expenditures on public health. By American standards Cuban doctors lacked equipment, and even by Cuban standards they were poorly paid, but they were generally well-trained, and Cuba had more of them per capita than any other country in the world- more than twice as many as the United States. Everyone, it appeared, had access to their services, and to procedures like open heart surgery. Indeed, according to a study by WHO, Cuba had the most equitably distributed medicine. Moreover, Cuba seemed to have mostly abandoned its campaign to change the world by exporting troops. Now they were sending doctors instead, to dozens of poor countries. About five hundred Cuban doctors worked gratis in Haiti now - not very effectively, because they lacked equipment, but even as a gesture it meant a lot to Farmer." (194)
"...No question that Cuba had pulled off something difficult and, in the view from Haiti, enviable -first-rate public health, equitably distributed, in spite of severely limited resources. I [Kidder] just wondered what price in political freedom its people had paid for that achievement. But I understood that Farmer would frame the question differently, and ask what price most people would be willing to pay for freedom from illness and premature death. For me, Cuba posed a rather abstract question. For Farmer, it represented hope, proof that a poor country could achieve good public health..." (208)
"If you do the right thing well, you avoid futility." (295)
DID NOT FINISH (But is good)
I read this book for class and it was really interesting! I like to read fiction so it was difficult to find the motivation to read, but when I was reading it was really interesting and was a cool book to examine in my ethics class.
I read this book for class and it was really interesting! I like to read fiction so it was difficult to find the motivation to read, but when I was reading it was really interesting and was a cool book to examine in my ethics class.
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced