About Tracy Kidder

The Baltimore Sun has described Tracy Kidder as the “master of non-fiction narrative.” His work has received many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Soul of a New Machine (1981), a book that chronicles the efforts of computer engineers in their quest to build one of the world’s first personal computers. He has published eight books, including Among Schoolchildren (1989), House (1985), Old Friends (1993) and Home Town (1999). Tracy Kidder started his career as a contributing writer for The Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review.

Kidder is well-known for his ability to capture the extraordinary facets of the lives of ordinary people. Mountains Beyond Mountains, his latest book about medical philanthropist, Dr. Paul Farmer, takes this talent into new territory. Kidder recently told the Atlantic Monthly that Dr. Farmer is “the least ordinary ordinary person” he has ever known. Kidder first met Dr. Farmer in 1994 while working on a story for Atlantic Monthly about the U.S. military’s involvement in reinstating Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government . Kidder later wrote a profile on Dr. Farmer titled “The Good Doctor” for the July 2000 issue of The New Yorker. That profile was the seed for Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Kidder graduated from Harvard in 1967 with a BA in English. He then served a tour of duty in Vietnam as a First Lieutenant and received a Bronze Star for his service. Upon returning home, he joined the University of Iowa’s writer’s workshop and received his MFA in 1974. He lives in Maine and Massachusetts.