Mountains Beyond Mountains

"Everyone has to read this book. I guess I just picked it for anyone who hasn’t read it and if you’re a progressive and you’re trying to figure out what to do with your life. Tracy Kidder is a great writer so that doesn’t hurt, but Paul Farmer’s story, the story of one person who decides they want to change the world, is so compelling. I think even for the most cynical, hard-bitten progressive you can’t help but read this book and feel inspired. So it’s a lot of levels. “I think even for the most cynical, hard-bitten progressive you can’t help but read this book and feel inspired” Obviously the whole idea is how one person can make a difference, which I think as progressives we have to continue to remind ourselves of. Obviously I’m very interested in his commitment to bring modern healthcare to people who need it – infectious diseases is the area that he focuses on – and his belief that healthcare is a basic human right is incredibly important, and that’s the work I feel like I’m engaged in every day. I love one of the things he says – his philosophy is that the only real nation is humanity. Again, I think that borders are just artificial divides between people of the world who are all struggling for the same thing. To me it’s a lovely story, it’s an important story, it’s clearly relevant to today. You can talk about what’s going on in terms of groundbreaking work to improve healthcare in this country without thinking about Haiti and without thinking about Paul Farmer, but even apart from that I just think it’s a very inspiring story. I made all my kids read it. Right. I think that’s right and I actually think that’s kind of what Paul believed too. Obviously he’s trying to move huge issues and huge pieces of work but throughout that story there are people who are doing what they can and making a difference where they can. I think there are times where it’s very discouraging because there are huge political movements that you feel are out of your control and so sometimes we do just have to buckle down and ask, “What are the pieces that we can actually influence and how can I make a difference?” In my dream, every progressive finds something that makes their heart sing, and that’s how they make a difference. Whether it is what Paul Farmer did, whether it’s writing an incredible novel that inspires people, whether it’s fighting for public education, it’s all going to add up to something greater than the sum of the parts. If we don’t believe that, we’re not going to make it."

"Yes, and I have chosen this is in connection with social entrepreneurship and what Yunus does with social business. So, this is on the medical and health side, and poverty and hunger and malnourishment are distinctly a part of that. Mountains Beyond Mountains looks at the work of Dr Paul Farmer setting sail against the inequities in the healthcare world. It’s practical and inspirational. It’s practical in that it shows what one very dedicated and committed individual can achieve. You look at the issue and it seems so big that you think: how can we make any difference? But here’s Dr Farmer who has the dedication to tackle the inequities in health. Tracy Kidder tells the story in a human way and gets beyond the sterile aspects of what needs to be done. Here is an individual who makes a difference. Yes. You feel that you too can get out and change things. You look at health and poverty and they are immense, but with that come equally enormous opportunities to attack that, so when you look at Norman Borlaug, there’s the practical things that he achieved but he was inspirational, too. He said: ‘Hunger can be conquered.’ Then Muhammad Yunus with micro-financing and Paul Farmer with health – hopefully you can read these books and feel that you too can go forward and do something."