Review: "Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World," by Tracy Kidder

Journalist Tracy Kidder writes the biography of Harvard-trained medical anthropologist, Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, an organization which provides health care in some of the poorest nations. Farmer acts to value all life equally including valuing other children as much as his own. In a "This I Believe" essay for NPR, Farmer offers his view of utopia:

"That goal is nothing less than the refashioning of our world into one in which no one starves, drinks impure water, lives in fear of the powerful and violent, or dies ill and unattended. Of course such a world is a utopia, and most of us know that we live in a dystopia. But all of us carry somewhere within us the belief that moving away from dystopia moves us towards something better and more humane."

The description of Farmer's extraordinary devotion to a core belief and corresponding course of action brought to mind Nelson Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. It was also interesting to note that Farmer was inspired both by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and Tolstoy's War and Peace.