Mountains Beyond Mountains

2007-2008 Common Experience Reading Book

Tracy Kidder tells the powerful and inspiring story of Dr. Paul Farmer, who, in 1987, with the help of friends—including a quiet, Boston philanthropist— co-founded Partners In Health, a non profit organization which has addressed the medical needs of hundreds of thousands of patients in Haiti, Peru, Russia and Boston, Massachusetts, as well as changed the way the medical world approaches the treatment of diseases such as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and AIDS. The philosophy that permeates all of Farmer’s work is that "the only real nation is humanity,” a belief also embodied in Partners In Health. Mountains Beyond Mountains follows Farmer from the United States to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia, always changing minds and practices. At the heart of Kidder’s book is the story of a life based on hope and the understanding of the Haitian proverb “Beyond mountains there are mountains”; in other words, as you solve one problem, another problem appears, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.

We hope that Mountains Beyond Mountains stimulates you to think about the choices you will make as college students and as citizens: what work you will choose to dedicate your life to, how we produce knowledge and in what interest, and how we deal with questions of poverty and rights in the world. We hope that engaging in discussion with us will help you to reflect on what it means to join a community like ours, and what your role in that community will be, and inspires you to see how one person can make a difference.

Description taken from: http://rchonors.rutgers.edu/sumread.htm