Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Essayist
A lot of the job of a person
trying to write stories that are true is to make what’s true believable. It
isn’t enough to say, well, it actually happened. You have to make it believable
on the page; you have to bring people to life and scenes to life.
—Tracy Kidder
Over his long career, Kidder’s
writing has been prolific and outstanding. The
Soul of a New Machine—a book celebrated for its insight into the
world of high-tech corporate America—earned
him a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award in 1982. Other bestselling
works include House 
(1985), Among Schoolchildren
(1989), Old Friends (1993) and Home
Town (1999).
His enormously influential book, Mountains
Beyond Mountains, (2003), captures two global health crises, tuberculosis and AIDS,
through the eyes of a single-minded physician bent on improving the health of
some of the poorest people on the planet.
The story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a major force in
revolutionizing international health, is a gripping and inspiring account one
man’s efforts to establish clinics and hospitals—his compassion for the poor,
his inner circle of true believers and, ultimately, his success in helping stem
the tide of new HIV and TB infections in Haiti. Farmer is the founder of Zanmi Lasante (Creole for Partners in Health),
a non-governmental organization that is the only health-care provider in the
Plateau Central in Haiti.
[Mountains Beyond
Mountains] “remind[s] us that we’re implicated in all the problems [Farmer] is
working to solve…His complicated humanity only makes him more like the rest of
us in our shortcomings—and leaves us asking why we all aren’t a little more
like him in our virtues” (Newsweek).
Kidder’s most recent book, My Detachment, is an extraordinary honest
account of his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam. Writing for the first time about himself,
Kidder presents an unromanticized self-portrait of a young man coming of age in
the controversial war that defined a generation.
Born in New
York City in 1945, Kidder spent his childhood in Oyster Bay, Long Island, where his father was a lawyer and his mother
a teacher. He attended Harvard where he earned a BA in 1967. From June 1968 until June 1969, he served as a lieutenant in Vietnam for which he was awarded a Bronze Star.
Following the war, Kidder obtained his MA from the University of Iowa, where he participated in the
Writers’ Workshop, a program known for the literary accomplishments of its
faculty and alumni. It was there that Kidder met Atlantic Monthly Contributing
Editor Dan Wakefield, who helped him get his first assignment for the magazine
as a freelance writer. Kidder’s articles in the The Atlantic have covered
a broad array of topics, ranging from railroads, to energy, architecture, the
environment among others.
I’m a little suspicious of the
great, overarching view. It always leaves something out. What interests me is
trying to catch the reflection of the human being on the page. I’m interested
in how ordinary people live their lives.
—Tracy Kidder
Tracy Kidder’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Granta and The New York Times Book Review and The New York Times OpEd page and he has also written several short works of fiction. Kidder lives with his wife in western Massachusetts and in Maine where he is at work on a new book.
Books
- My Detachment (Random House, 2005)
- Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House, 2003)
- Home Town (Random House, 1999)
- Old Friends (Houghton Mifflin, 1993)
- Among Schoolchildren (Houghton Mifflin, 1989)
- House (Houghton Mifflin, 1985)
- The Soul of a New Machine (Little, Brown, 1981)
Awards 1989 Robert F. Kennedy Award Winner for
Among School Children 1982 National Book Award Winner for
Soul of a New Machine 1982 Pulitzer Prize Winner for
Soul of a New Machine To hear an interview with Tracy Kidder on National Public Radio,
click here.