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4.2 AVERAGE
4.2 AVERAGE
This book about Dr Paul Farmer really does make you want to jump in to figure out how you can help save the world. Kidder’s long form biography shaped by years of relationship and observation with Farmer tells a compelling story of a man who gives his all to the poor of the world through his advocacy and hands on care. Really inspiring!
Excellent book. Especially for anyone who needs inspiration to make a difference in the world, or is interested in international health and humanitarian pursuits.
Really enjoyed learning more about Paul Farmer and his work. It's told in a few perspectives: as a colleague, as an interviewer, and as an observer. I learned a lot about TB, medication, treatment, and inequality in Haiti. Inspirational story, great read.
A wonderful book that shows what one person can do with passion and intent.
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
3.5
Paul Farmer’s name and the idea of him has been in my conscience since C’s training days at the same Boston institution he was at when we dreamed of partnering with him in Africa, as well as through several friends whose work directly or indirectly was tied to Partners in Health.
Reading this after his death makes me feel ever more sad. What a loss…
Paul Farmer’s name and the idea of him has been in my conscience since C’s training days at the same Boston institution he was at when we dreamed of partnering with him in Africa, as well as through several friends whose work directly or indirectly was tied to Partners in Health.
Reading this after his death makes me feel ever more sad. What a loss…
Inspiring, world changing, and...overlong? Paul Farmer is a saint, but I almost feel ashamed to say that I don't like him. Kidder's portrayal of him in this biography isn't always flattering, and I still can't figure out if Kidder himself liked Farmer. Farmer's easy to admire and praise, but still he's abrasive. I was sometimes more interested in hearing about his colleague, Dr. Kim (what with that karaoke bit in Russia and all). Overall, this book is a breathtaking look at public health around the world and Farmer's revolutionary approach to it. Amazing and jaw-dropping, but biographies aren't really my genre.
This is my summer reading book for the MDiv program at Emory.
Questions we're being asked to consider:
- What perspectives does the book offer about vocation and service?
- How does Paul Farmer's life inspire, challenge, or create questions as you pursue your vocation as student and as religious leader?
- What changes do you hope to effect in the world? What mountains do you see?
The stories in this book are both gut-wrenching and inspiring. Farmer's life is a motivation to consider one's influence on society and the world and that (as cheesy and cliche as it sounds) one person can have a huge impact.
Questions we're being asked to consider:
- What perspectives does the book offer about vocation and service?
- How does Paul Farmer's life inspire, challenge, or create questions as you pursue your vocation as student and as religious leader?
- What changes do you hope to effect in the world? What mountains do you see?
The stories in this book are both gut-wrenching and inspiring. Farmer's life is a motivation to consider one's influence on society and the world and that (as cheesy and cliche as it sounds) one person can have a huge impact.
A very fine book that will make you feel utterly inadequate for the ways in which you have wasted nearly every opportunity you have been given to save the world.
Dr. Paul Farmer is a man of huge energy, enormous ambition, blithe disregard for commonly accepted normality, and absolutely no compunction about pissing you off in the process. His only aim is to help the poor, starving, underserved people of this world get what they need. You are either on his bus or off his bus and if it's the latter, he doesn't much care, but you need to stay out of his way. Kidder does an excellent job of bringing this story to the forefront.
Which is not to say Farmer is bossy or pushy—he doesn't need to be. He is just single-minded. There is one question: is what we are doing helping someone who is poor or sick or otherwise deserving? If yes, good. If no, bad. Simple. Don't disturb him with questions of practicality, proportion (they spend $20,000 to transport one gravely ill child, for instance), the balance of resources to need, or any of that stuff. Just do it. And for him, it is working.
Beginning in Haiti, then moving on to Peru and eventually to efforts all over the world, his organization, Partners In Health, is bringing to those who need it the clean water, health care, shelter, and other essentials their own governments and the assistance of other, richer countries such as ours have not been able to pull off. It is an admirable effort, if not entirely replicable (though Farmer would challenge this assertion) because it is based so much on the force of one person's personality.
But, hey, far be it from me to gainsay him any advance he might be making. God knows we have done far too little for far too long. I will now return to feeling entirely inadequate.
Dr. Paul Farmer is a man of huge energy, enormous ambition, blithe disregard for commonly accepted normality, and absolutely no compunction about pissing you off in the process. His only aim is to help the poor, starving, underserved people of this world get what they need. You are either on his bus or off his bus and if it's the latter, he doesn't much care, but you need to stay out of his way. Kidder does an excellent job of bringing this story to the forefront.
Which is not to say Farmer is bossy or pushy—he doesn't need to be. He is just single-minded. There is one question: is what we are doing helping someone who is poor or sick or otherwise deserving? If yes, good. If no, bad. Simple. Don't disturb him with questions of practicality, proportion (they spend $20,000 to transport one gravely ill child, for instance), the balance of resources to need, or any of that stuff. Just do it. And for him, it is working.
Beginning in Haiti, then moving on to Peru and eventually to efforts all over the world, his organization, Partners In Health, is bringing to those who need it the clean water, health care, shelter, and other essentials their own governments and the assistance of other, richer countries such as ours have not been able to pull off. It is an admirable effort, if not entirely replicable (though Farmer would challenge this assertion) because it is based so much on the force of one person's personality.
But, hey, far be it from me to gainsay him any advance he might be making. God knows we have done far too little for far too long. I will now return to feeling entirely inadequate.