Book Description
Tracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the bestsellers
The Soul of a New Machine,
House,
Among
Schoolchildren, and
Home
Town. He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the “master of the non-fiction narrative.” This powerful and inspiring new book shows how one person can make a difference, as Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who is in love with the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it.
At the center of
Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer—brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti—blasts through convention to get results.
Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity" - a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners In Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb “Beyond mountains there are mountains”: as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.
“
Mountains Beyond Mountains unfolds with the force of a gathering revelation,” says Annie Dillard, and Jonathan Harr says, “[Farmer] wants to change the world. Certainly this luminous and powerful book will change the way you see it.”
Download Description
Tracy Kidder is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of the bestsellers The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, and Home Town. He has been described by the Baltimore Sun as the "master of the non-fiction narrative." This powerful and inspiring new book shows how one person can make a difference, as Kidder tells the true story of a gifted man who is in love with the world and has set out to do all he can to cure it.
At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life's calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer -- brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti -- blasts through convention to get results.
Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity" -- a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners In Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.'s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.
"Mountains Beyond Mountains unfolds with the force of a gathering revelation," says Annie Dillard, and Jonathan Harr says, "[Farmer] wants to change the world. Certainly this luminous and powerful book will change the way you see it."
"In this excellent work, Pulitzer Prize-winner Kidder immerseshimself in and beautifully explores the rich drama that exists in thelife of Dr. Paul Farmer... Throughout, Kidder captures the almost saintlyeffect Farmer has on those whom he treats."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW
"[A] Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishinghuman being."
KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW
"A fine writer and his extraordinary subject: Tracy Kidder, in givingus Paul Farmer, lifts up an image of hope -- and challenge -- that theworld urgently needs. Simply put, this is an important book."
JAMES CARROLL , AUTHOR OF CONSTANTINE'S SWORD
"The central character of this marvelous book is one of the mostprovocative, brilliant, funny, unsettling, endlessly energetic, irksome,and charming characters ever to spring to life on the page. He hasembarked on an epic struggle that will take you from the halls ofHarvard Medical School to a sun-scorched plateau in Haiti, from theslums of Peru to the cold gray prisons of Moscow. He wants to change theworld. Certainly this luminous and powerful book will change the way yousee it."
JONATHAN HARR, AUTHOROF
Customer Reviews:
great subject, great writer.......2007-08-06
Loved this book, and especially loved the subject. Tracy Kidder is, not surprisingly given his track record, an accomplished and skillful writer. He tells the story of Paul Farmer and, while he is part of the story, he is careful to never become the story. The focus is always on Dokte Paul.
Paul Farmer is a character who will haunt you, if you have any inclination to serve others. He does so completely and thoughtfully and, at the same time, irrationally. He treats his patients in Haiti with dignity and passion.
I highly recommend this book. It's hard to resist the combination of a compelling subject and a masterful writer.
amazing man doing amazing things.......2007-07-06
a really wonderful look at the work of Dr. Paul Farmer an amazing physician who has contributed greatly to help treat Aids and TB in parts of the world where noone believes they can be treated. This book will make you reexamine some of your beliefs about access to healthcare--both for the poor in this country and around the world.
Heartwarming Story.......2007-05-12
An excellent story of the impact one dedicated person can have on the world around us.
'There's a lot that can be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity. It's what separates us from roaches'.......2006-12-22
Tracy Kidder's brilliant biography of Dr. Paul Farmer is at once disturbing and exhilarating: disturbing, as it points out all the inequalities in living conditions and health care between the rich and the poor and the staggering statistics about disease and the lack of available medical aid in many parts of the world, and exhilarating to read the selfless commitment of one man to change these situations. Not only is the information in this inordinately readable book fascinating but also the superb writing style of Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder is some of the best to be published in recent years.
Kidder concerns his book with one Paul Farmer, a poor lad who grew up nearly homeless (unless one calls living on a riverboat a home) in Alabama, a gifted thinker who climbed out of his beginnings to discover the inequities in the big world, went to medical school at Harvard, and then proceeded to commit his life to changing the pitiful poverty and disease-ridded Haiti, establishing not only viable medical centers but also spreading his warm personality into the hinterlands of that little country making day-long walking housecalls for the poor families who as human beings deserve as fine a quality of medicine as those who live near the wealthy comforts of the major city medical centers.
How Kidder accompanied and observed Farmer as he sought funding and supplies and training not only in Haiti, where the diseases of tuberculosis and AIDS were decimating the population while the world just silently watched, but also extending his beneficence to Peru and to the prisons of Russia, attack tuberculosis and AIDS with the same ardor is the basis of this book. Farmer's accomplishments created the Partners in Health organization that in turn stimulated the World Health Organization to wake up to the disasters that reign in the third world countries, eventually supplying the much needed medicines, cash, buildings and personnel to begin to make a change in the world health care.
Kidder's gift as a writer lies not only in his detailed and well researched biography of a modern saint, but also in his ability to allow us to get to know the very human creature named Paul Farmer. He touches on his personal life, his struggles with his own diseases (he nearly died from hepatitis), and his indomitable spirit in facing a bureaucratic conundrum that prevented the poor of the world from receiving care. It is a touching story, it is a superlative investigation into one man's spirit and selfless commitment, and it is a book that demands our attention on many levels. Tracy Kidder's sharing of Dr. Paul Farmer's life is a poignant reminder that the individual CAN make a difference: it is a matter or devotion to an ideal that can become a reality despite obstructions the world places in the path. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, December 06
You can change the world.......2006-11-07
This book gives encouragement for people who want to believe that one person can change the world for the better.
Book Description
Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life--and death--in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other.
Farmer shows that the same social forces that give rise to epidemic diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis also sculpt risk for human rights violations. He illustrates the ways that racism and gender inequality in the United States are embodied as disease and death. Yet this book is far from a hopeless inventory of abuse. Farmer's disturbing examples are linked to a guarded optimism that new medical and social technologies will develop in tandem with a more informed sense of social justice. Otherwise, he concludes, we will be guilty of managing social inequality rather than addressing structural violence. Farmer's urgent plea to think about human rights in the context of global public health and to consider critical issues of quality and access for the world's poor should be of fundamental concern to a world characterized by the bizarre proximity of surfeit and suffering.
Customer Reviews:
Health and survival as human rights.......2007-05-30
Paul Farmer, perhaps the most famous 'Third World doctor' living today, has written an eloquent and moving plea for a reconsideration of modern approaches toward healthcare in the developing nations in this book, "Pathologies of Power". Based on his personal experiences of care in Haiti, but also his professional visits to Russia, Africa, Central America, Mexico, Cuba and many other places besides, Paul Farmer demonstrates that the problematics of healthcare and those of poverty and inequality are insolubly linked in these nations. Whoever says "heal the sick" must also say "end poverty", for the one is not possible without the other; and whoever says "prevent disease" must also say "destroy socio-economic inequality", for the one is not possible without the other. That is the message of this book.
A large part of the work consists of reflections by Farmer on his experiences in Haiti and elsewhere and on the way in which the current worldwide economic structures engender a genuine and systematic violence against the rights of the poor. Strongly inspired by liberation theology (though not necessarily religious), Farmer eloquently and effectively contrasts the heavy importance attached to individual political and legal rights with the way in which the violations of rights done by structural inequalities and injustices is wholly ignored in the same circles that would complain about the former. Rights issues are the domain of jurists, development issues the domain of (liberal) economists; but the way in which the poor and weak are constantly crushed by the systematic repression that is poverty and inequality, at least as real and at least as much a violation as any torture, that seems to be the domain of nobody at all. As Paul Farmer clearly shows, even in the lately so blossoming domain of medical and bioethics the issue of socio-economic structures is completely swept under the carpet. As he says, this really is the "elephant in the room".
The same also goes for the oft-invoked importance of efficiency. Callous and counterproductive Western, often American, inspired healthcare policies in the developing nations (among which we must now sadly share Russia as well) generally fail at providing effective treatment against simple preventable disease such as TBC, because those medications that would actually help are considered "not cost-effective". This is in fact just a polite way of saying "we don't care about these people", but then phrased in a manner that will lead to less of an uproar in the newspapers. Farmer however is not fooled so easily, and sees this for what it is - a structural repression of the developing nations by the developed ones, in the name of "efficiency", i.e. efficiency in achieving the aims of the Western states.
This book is a very powerful work, and a strong indictment of the prevailing attitude towards healthcare and development issues and the little attention paid to their interrelation. It also demonstrates convincingly how the current worldwide economic system is bad for everybody's health. And what could be a more important thing than that?
Pathologies of Power.......2007-05-12
Read this book. Paul Farmer is one of the few who can enlighten us to a more profound understanding of the mechanisms that underlie disease in so many of its forms. He sees farther than most of us and comes to his conclusions with a gigantic intellect and hard hard hands-on work with the poor and ill for over 2 decades in Haiti and elsewhere. He is our Albert Schweitzer. His concept of "structural violence", that set of social and economic intrastructure deficits that set aside "rich" from "poor" and lays open the environment for not only the contagious diseases like TB and HIV, but also allows for the malnourishment and the reduced choices in nutrition, allows for the maintenance of the dearth of available health care resources, sanitation and educational systems, the conflation of which prevents protection against the illnesses of poverty, puts the reader into the realm of being forced to see a hidden and dirty truth. His prose is mutedly angry. His emotions are unmistakably righteous. His undressing of some of the "liberal" NGO mentality is eye opening. He is the real deal. Read his elegant words and get a glimpse at reality. We are sadly blinded to it by some of the "pathologies" of the powers that be. I have been a physician for almost 30 years. I've given this book to my sons who are young physicians. The thoroughness of his presentation of the causes of the societal ills that allow for the illnesses, and the bibiography that supports his theses are encylopedic in scope. Again, he is the real deal.
passion for the poor.......2007-01-18
Paul Farmer is a Harvard MD and PhD (anthropology), clinician, tuberculosis specialist, author of numerous books and scholarly articles, recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, and Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School--when he is not living in a hut in his beloved Haiti where he founded Partners in Health, or traveling a quarter million miles a year to lecture, visit prisons, or meet with George Soros or the Gates Foundation. Most important of all, Farmer is an unapologetic, outspoken, and radical advocate for the poorest of the poor. Adequate health care, he insists, is a basic human right for every human being, and our world is failing miserably in this regard. His fascinating life story is told by Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003).
According to a World Bank study from 1993, today in Sub-Saharan Africa "the median age at death is less than five years," (p. xi; no typographical error). Such deplorable disparities between rich and poor, Farmer writes, are not random occurrences, they are not accidental, inescapable or necessary. Rather, they result from pathologies of power, human agency, and structural violence. Quoting the liberation theologian Jon Sobrino, "The poor of the world are not the causal products of human history. No, poverty results from the actions of other human beings" (p. 143). Which is to say that the brutal asymmetry that consigns over half the world to wretchedness is not irremediable. Resignation, in fact, is the most inexcusable choice we could make. However daunting and complex, we can ameliorate these unacceptable conditions if we make other choices: "This book is a physician-anthropologist's effort to reveal the ways in which the most basic right--the right to survive--is trampled in an age of great affluence, and it argues that the matter should be considered the most pressing one of our times" (p. 6).
Farmer spends considerable time charting anecdotal evidence from his two decades of clinical practice serving the poorest of the poor. These detailed case studies from Haiti, Chiapas, Peru, Russia and Cuba are not mere examples but instead emblematic of the problem. Further, following liberation theologians who have deeply influenced him, Farmer strongly advocates listening carefully to the voices of the poor themselves, in their own words, and not only to health "experts" in Geneva, New York and Paris. "I believe," writes Farmer, that 'the poor and impoverished of the world, in virtue of their very reality, constitute the most radical question of the truth of this world, as well as the most correct response to this question'" (p. 202).
Some will dismiss rhetoric like that as from a wild-eyed idealist, or an angry extremist, but Farmer would respond that what is extreme and harsh are the conditions of way too many human beings in the world, which ought to evoke anger, and not his passionate advocacy for them (p. 254). Rather than merely "manage" these horrible social inequalities, Farmer challenges each one of us to make a difference by what he calls "pragmatic solidarity" with the poor.
Farmer lucid and compelling as ever.......2007-01-04
For anyone who is inspired by the remarkable work Paul Farmer has engaged in over the years, this book offers a sound explanation of his guiding doctrine on human rights and healthcare for the poor.
Toward a "real" medical ethics.......2006-11-11
It's a big world, but we Americans seem to reside in a small one, at least those of us fortunate enough to be insured and able to afford the health care we need. Many fellow US citizens cannot afford to be sick or ill at all, yet their needs may be tended only once they are so ill that emergency room care is required, but maybe not even then. Then there are the desperately poor of other nations and whole regions of the world that have virtually no care at all. This book is about those folks and medicine as it is currently practiced and dispensed here and abroad. Author Doctor Paul Farmer shows that modern medical practice violates the very ethos that spawned the impulse to heal in the first place.
This book has a lot of structural problems that, while off-putting, are easily ignored by the enormous contribution Farmer makes to our understanding of a set of topics that most of us have not thought about at all. This is an important and inspired book, one that is clear and easy to read, although marred by redundancy that a good editor might have helped eliminate. The thesis topic is that the desperately poor deserve more attention, not less as they now are accorded, because they are more vulnerable by definition. Farmer successfully questions the allocation of our resources toward corporate profits rather than treating the poor of the world.
Farmer's case studies based on his experience of working in Boston, Hattie, and the Russian Republic amply illustrate that our health care priorities are backward and unjust at best, pernicious and self defeating at worst. Every medical ethics course in the US ought to require this along with, or in place of, their existing textbooks that grind over the hoary issues of abortion and euthanasia, and a lot of other topics that are luxuries of a rich society that all but ignores those in greatest need.
Amazon.com
The violent forms of child abuse that make headlines are not the only ones that leave lifelong scars. A child who grows up in an unstable environment where empathy, clear boundaries and trust are lacking, can end up living a ravaged adulthood. Children can be crippled by mixed messages, family secrets and reversed parent-child roles. Many victims of these practices are not even sure their childhood was abusive. This balanced, practical guide delineates traits of abusive families. Narrative vignettes in each section illustrate and personalize critical issues. Most valuable is the step-by-step self-help program that includes exercises and journal work for recovery.
Book Description
A history of a childhood abuse is not a life sentence. Here is hope, healing, and a chance to recover the self lost in childhood. Drawing on his extensive work with Adult Children, and on his own experience as a survivor of emotional neglect, therapist Steven Farmer demonstrates that through exercises and journal work, his program can help lead you through grieving your lost childhood, to become your own parent, and integrate the healing aspects of spiritual, physical, and emotional recovery into your adult life.
Customer Reviews:
Starts out great, then doesn't measure up........2007-05-13
I found that this book, although promising a fresh look at the age old problems of adult children of abuse, falls short in the long run. Adults who experienced abuse as children are usually well aware of that abuse. This book deals with uncovering the abuse, and then takes, in my opinion, controversial steps at therapy. Those steps include a "reconstruction of the past" in essence fabricating lies and letting those lies replace the truths of the abuse. I, for one, was looking for a way to defeat the anger I feel, not reconstruct my past into some idyllic existence. For me, living a lie where I remember parents who never existed would only be compounding the problem.
So, I cannot recommend this book as part of an affective regimen of therapy.
Adult Children of Abusive Parents.......2007-03-09
This book made me feel the pain of those who have suffered at the hands of abusive parents. It proved to be useful for my course project.
Healing Abuse.......2007-01-09
If you have been abused: sexually, mentally or verbally by a parent or guardian, and you are the walking "wounded", you need to read this book. It helps you to get past all that trauma, forgive that person and go on with your life. Forgiveness doesn't mean you'll ever forget, it means you let go. There's so much you can do on your own and this is a great start!!
Paula
Very Dissapointed with this book.......2006-11-03
I could not finish this book. In part one I kept reading about daughters being molested by their fathers and step-fathers -- it was too much.
book review.......2006-01-17
The book was informative and helpful. It gave me some real insight into helping my patients. I have also recommended the book to some of my patients.
Amazon.com
The trend towards cooking and eating according to the seasons has been steadily gaining momentum, and it's no wonder. A fresh, deep red, perfectly ripe tomato in the middle of August seems a different species altogether than those insipid, crunchy, watery specimens we see in the supermarket in January. In The Farmer's Market Cookbook, Richard Ruben goes one better. A chef and food consultant in New York City, Ruben conducts "Green Market" classes at Peter Kump's Cooking School. He's shopped at farmers' markets all over the world and has put together a beautiful collection of simple, clear, easy-to-follow recipes that take full advantage of the kinds of specialty produce available all across the country.
Divided into sections for spring, summer, and autumn, this little volume is peppered with poetic notes and introductions by Ruben, who is obviously inspired by the produce he finds. Fava beans must have "a full allotment developed within." Lavender transports him "to languid, sun-drenched days." Choosing wild mushrooms, his "mind was now conveyed to a moist, shadowy forest." He's even included a number of food-inspired haikus for good measure!
But even if you don't appreciate his poetry, Ruben's recipes are well worth a try. Ingredient lists are short and the instructions are simple--if the produce is delectably fresh, the argument goes, what more do you need? Spring offers dishes such as Fiddlehead Fern Risotto, Lamb Marinated in Tropical Juice (with fresh mint and spinach or baby bok choy), and Wilted Escarole Scented with Garlic. Summer's bounty includes Grilled Summer Corn and Tomatillo Relish, Grilled Chicken Breasts with Summer Squash, Gnocchi with Cherry Tomatoes and Sage Butter, and Lemon Verbena Sorbet. And in autumn there are dishes such as Quince and Pomegranate Chutney, Kale with Caramelized Onions and Portobello Mushrooms, and Stuffed Dumpling Squash.
Fortunately, most of the ingredients called for are available in supermarkets, so even if your idea of fun is not a Saturday morning at the market, you can still easily create these seasonal dishes at home. And for those who love nothing better than to wander through the stalls, chat with the farmers, and find a new vegetable or herb at the local farmers' market, chances are you'll find a simple recipe here to highlight whatever you discover. --Leora Y. Bloom
Book Description
Cooking seasonally means having a keen eye and a sensitive nose as you traverse the aisles of nature's store. The harbingers of each season are color-coded - spring's plate is drenched with verdant tender stalks and gentle herbs; summer is resplendent with myriad bold reds, oranges, and yellows; autumn is rich with umber root vegetables and a second hooray of green leaves. Understanding this spectrum is an essential starting point to setting a menu. The Farmer's Market Cookbook will guide the home cook through the ripening seasons and serve as a road map allowing him or her to navigate any local market - be it farm stand or grocer's aisle. Chef Richard Ruben offers dozens of simple, elegant recipes that celebrate the gifts of nature's cycle from spring (fiddlehead fern risotto; fried green tomatoes; lamb marinated in tropical juice; rhubarb and almond crisp) to summer (strawberry tomato salsa; chilled cucumber/mint soup; grilled chicken breast with summer squash; lemon verbena sorbet) to autumn (ginger butternut soup; curried brussels sprouts; venison sausage stew; crisp apple towers). Ruben also provides additional information on the origin and proper selection of produce, hints for putting up flavored vinegars and oils, and historical facts about food. The Farmer's Market Cookbook presents an original approach to modern cuisine that hearkens back to a simple time when the land around us provided our meals, while also helping to fulfill our eclectic current cravings. (81/4 X 81/4, 202 pages)
Customer Reviews:
Great for NYC cooks.......2007-02-10
Great book, especially for anyone who shops at the Greenmarket at Union Square in NYC. I've taken several classes from Chef Richard, who teaches recreational greenmarket cooking classes at ICE, and they're even better than the book.
Real Food... Real Recipes...Real Passion...Richard Ruben.......2001-05-28
This is a cookbook that people who really love food in it's purest form must have. Richard Ruben translates his enthusiasm for the farmer's (or ethnic) market into simple recipes with sophisticated flavors that sing. His appoarch to food re-affirms that old adage, simple is better. As you read through his personal collection of recipes, you want to make every one. But must do so season by season to get the best results. In this day and age of hundreds of cookbooks, Ruben distinguishes himself quietly and with authority, reminiscent of the early days of Alice Waters when passion for food and the best ingrendients were the only motivators. If I could only have one cookbook and a market, it would certainly be this one. BUY THIS BOOK FOR THE SUMMER and continue to use it through fall and winter...
A Must Have.......2001-01-18
My self and many others think that The Farmers Market cook book by one of the greatest cookbook authors Richard Ruben is a MUST have. Myself and many others also think that this book is one of if not the best cookbook that has come out this year and one of the best cookbooks of all time. If you like Healthy, fun, GREAT food you must go out and buy this AMAZING book.
A Look At The Man I Know As My Uncle.......2000-11-23
There's so many things that I can say about this book, it combines great recipies with a great style of writing to get the reader really interested in his/her cooking. But I don't want to review the book on how good the food is or how great the writing is because that's already been done. I would just like to congratulate my Uncle on a great book even though he put my Aunt and Cousin's full names in the book and only my families last. For anyone who loves food this is a great book and a great gift.
Fantastic ways to cook the best nature has to offer.......2000-11-23
This cookbook is magnificent! Fun, wittily written, simple to follow, Richard Ruben focuses on enjoying the fresh goodness the earth offers us in each season. It's about tasting and exploring what's in front of us, presented by the growers themselves. Easy-to-follow recipes, ideas, charts, seasonal suggestions....it's great. I'm not much of a cook and I used this book to wow a dinner party with pheasant, curried brussel sprouts, & individual squashes stuffed with fennel, apples, & carrots. It's a valuable, exciting, DELICIOUS standout in a crowded field.
Book Description
Residents of Haiti—one of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world—face a grim reality of starvation, violence, lack of economic opportunity, and minimal health care. For years, aid organizations have sought to alleviate the problems by creating health and family planning clinics, including one modern (and, by local standards, luxurious) center in the heart of Cité Soleil. During its height of service in the 1980s and 1990s, the clinic boasted nineteen staff members, an array of modern contraceptives, an accessible location, and convenient hours—but very few clients.
Why did this initiative fail so spectacularly despite surveys finding that residents would like to have fewer children? Why don't poor women heed the message of family planning, when smaller families seem to be in their best interest? In Reproducing Inequalities, M. Catherine Maternowska argues that we too easily overlook the political dynamics that shape choices about family planning. Through a detailed study of the attempt to provide modern contraception in the community of Cité Soleil, Maternowska demonstrates the complex interplay between local and global politics that so often thwarts well-intended policy initiatives.
Medical anthropologists, she argues, have an important role to play in developing new action plans for better policy implementation. Ethnographic studies in desperate, dangerous locations provide essential data that can point the way to solutions for the dilemmas of contraception in poor communities worldwide.
Customer Reviews:
One of the Best Books on Women's Health Issues.......2001-02-12
"Lucid, smart, passionate, and compassionate, Women, Poverty & AIDS puts the calss back into class analysis. Through a diversity of voices, experiences, geographies and disciplines, the contributors argue that poverty as a factor in the global HIV epidemic is pervasive, neglected, and urgent. Povery is inescapably linked to gender. Acall to arms on behalf of health and social justice for poor women, its impact is searing." --Paula Treichler, University of Illinois, Urbana, editor of The Feminist Dictionary
"Exceedingly well-written, this book shows that AIDS is a wake-up call--we must be about the business of transforming our world, if for no other reason than to prevent the creation of a worse epidemic, which could be the inevitable sequel to our failure to contain this one. A compelling presentation of people, programs and ideas, Women, Poverty & AIDS has an important message of hope." --Robert Fullilove and Mindy Fullilove, M.D., Columbia School of Public Health
"Moving beyond a simple biomedical model, this book compels us to view AIDS in women in a wholly new way, as an inescapable event in lives devalued by the forces of poverty, racism, and sexism. This extraordinary multidisciplinary effort should serve as the guidebook for those who want to understand how AIDS could become a leading killer of young women in a mere decade." --Deborah Cotton, M.D., Massachusetts General Hospital, editor of The Medical Management of AIDS in Women
"Women, Poverty & AIDS makes a major contribution by staying always close to the lived realities of real people in real places, and refusing the old, empty, pat answers to difficult questions. A hard-nosed, real-life analysis--an antidote to status quo thinking--this should be required reading for all who care about AIDS--or public health." --Jonathan Mann, M.D., Director of the International AIDS Center, and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health
A terrible contradiction.......2000-12-21
WPA is a book that makes a horrible contradiction, it asks professionals working in related fields to the AIDS pandemic to examine certain kinds of structural violence regarding gender and poverty, which the authors correctly claim have been mostly overlooked - that is, poor women forms one of the groups most brutally hit by AIDS. No help, no medicine, no programs, no interest from academics, public health institutions, etc results in brutal and lethal suffering for poor women and their families. On the other hand, by the language they use to talk about prostitution systems, WPA authors practice and perpetuate serious forms of structural violence against poor women and children.
The book is divided into 3 parts: 1) "Rethinking AIDS" tries to take a global look at the AIDS pandemic specially regarding poor women; 2) "Rereading AIDS," examines problems with social science, public health, and clinical medicine on AIDS and poor women; and 3) profiles organizations who offer services to people with AIDS with a sensitive framework towards poverty and women.
Throughout the book, where the issue of prostitution regularly appears, the authors adopt the trend to refer to women and children in prostitution as "sex workers." They do alternatively use "prostitute," but the emphasis is "sex worker," "sex tourism," "sex industry," words which serve to hide any form of violence, crime, and torture in prostitution systems. Even in their own vignette of Lata, a prostituted teenager, which is such a typical case in prostitution or the rape tourism industry, which exemplifies so many of the forms of violence suffered by prostituted children and women, the authors use mostly a falsely non-violent language that serves to make invisible and push away from conscience the very violence the authors are describing. Lata is an Indian girl who is "sold" by her parents to a pimp, she is raped, kidnapped, and sexually and psychologically abused into a prostitution system, and after all of that, while still in captivity, while still being coerced to have sex with men (i.e. being systematically raped), she is called by the authors a "sex worker." It is particularly disgusting to see authors who write a book asking people to take into account structural forms of violence against women - in particular, the brutal consequences of poverty: lack of safety, human rights, medical care, care for their children, economic survival, psychological well being- and who at the same time use a vocabulary and language that serves to hide so many forms of violence perpetrated against these very women and children in prostitution systems. I don't see using "sex worker" as a step forward from "prostitute." If the word "prostitute" carries a stigma, the problem won't be resolved by using a language that serves to hide the violence involved in the system. Authors can come up with something less irresponsible than that.
The term "sex worker" is so comfortable, so nifty, so postmodern-chic, so trendy-but so disgustingly violent, so corrupt in its insensitivity to the suffering and trauma perpetrated against defenseless children and women in prostitution, and so in collusion with every single person who would like to erase from the public eye, and consequently from accountability and punishment, the great violations of various human rights involved in systems of prostitution and the rape tourism industry. This is particularly problematic in a book that has subtitles such as " the use of culture and construction of denial to explain this or that," "making it explicit: women, poverty, AIDS," "exaggeration of poor women's agency," and not least, "lack of accountability." It's Orwellian.
Authors such as those from WPA usually justify their practice of the above violence by saying that "sex worker, et al" is a vocabulary that does not stigmatize those in prostitution. But the compounded horrendous forms of violence (specially structural ones) in prostitution are much worse than the processes of stigmatization. So why, when there is so much violence in prostitution, have academics adopted such a camouflaged, deceptive wording? How privileged, dehumanized, and lacking in accountability regarding a language that erases real violence from conscience in prostitution systems are these and other authors?
The answer, unfortunately, is "very." Albeit WPA provides some very important information, plus heartbreaking profiles of diverse women, nationally and internationally brutalized by AIDS, plus the discussion of various serious problems regarding poor women and AIDS, it felt, in my view, like two steps backwards, one step forward. Purporting to raise issues of the violence of poverty towards women and their families - of which prostitution is a significant destroyer of human rights-the authors end up caught up in the same problem they are trying to denounce.
Book Description
Does the scientific "theory" that HIV came to North America from Haiti stem from underlying attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism in the United States rather than from hard evidence? Anthropologist-physician Paul Farmer answers in the affirmative with this, the first full-length ethnographic study of AIDS in a poor society.
Customer Reviews:
Reading this book will change your life.......2002-08-08
Farmer's excellent historical ethnography of Haitian illness (as seen through the contemporary context of the world AIDS epidemic), proves the necessity of developing anthropological approaches to understanding health systems and implementing medical care. The diagnosis and analysis of sickness, disease, illness, and treatment should go hand-in-hand with the cultural understanding of local systems of blame, accusation, causation, and cure. Where most approaches to medicine are based on the "Westernized" first-world nations' understanding of the causes of illness (tainted as well, as Farmer shows, by systematic "blame the victim" and shame techniques), the adoption of these approaches in treating the illnesses of other peoples can be catastrophic. Three ethnographies make up the structure of a detailed historical inquiry )
The longstanding tradition of conceiving of illness through the lens of powerlessness shapes the contemporary lives of the people in Haiti with whom Farmer worked. Although they could see the effects of the illness, people in this region were obsessed with the cause of the illness, and felt the need to understand AIDS through a constructed narrative of blame. A deep belief in their religion led villagers to look for the source of witchcraft that could possibly be harming them, and elaborate stories about neighbors, jealousies, and rivalries flourished as a result. Any improvement in the standing of one member of the society (through wealth, status, relationships, acquisition of property or food, or political power through employment or marriage) adds to the structure of distrust and blame.
Farmer's book shows how disturbingly complex and deep the layers of mistrust, misinformation, and the effects of racism, are. Among the medical hypotheses for the probable exposure is the theory of Haitian sex-workers' contacts through gay tourists to the early strains of HIV. Farmer outlines the long history of Haiti as a gay tourist attraction, and Duvalier's encouragement of tourism as a boost to the domestic economy. Although the possible cause of the gay sex trade for HIV exposure has not been confirmed, medical establishments in the U.S. based their theories of causation on other factors, such as Haitian religious practices. These theories were, in truth, reinforcing longstanding ignorance and racist misunderstandings about Haitian vodou. Stereotypes and racial profiling of Haitian citizenship as a "risk factor" (one of the "Four H's" along with hemophiliac, homosexual, and heroin user), contributed to public policies against Haitian immigrants. Haitians' belief that they are being attacked by some evil sorcery in the guise of a fatal illness called sida falls into place amidst the context of extreme antagonism and injustice.
While reading this book, I was compelled to ask myself if there isn't some truth in Haitians' understanding of AIDS as the result of malicious sorcery. Haiti was the only American society to successfully result from the direct action of a revolution against slavery and colonialism. As such, the small nation governed by creoles and black ex-slaves presented a threat to North and South American colonial societies, which were firmly entrenched in slave labor economic systems. Historically, the threat of a repeat of the Haitian revolution must have terrified white European landowners. This terror of African power and strength has been passed on in a racist legacy, adapted to political policies and nationalist agendas, and still exists in ignorant beliefs about AIDS and its causes. Haitians believe that they are victims of a longstanding racist agenda, and they may in fact be right. Farmer's book begins to illuminate some of the complicated historical and ethnographic realities of the overlapping connections between illness and racism, and between causes and effects.
One of the 4-Hs shouldn't be........2000-02-05
This book dispels the common myths of Haitians and AIDS. It also shows very clearly the heavy involvement of the United States in creating the poverty Haiti has faced. This book makes use of statistics well, but unfortunately, at this point those stats are many years old. When Farmer wrote this book, only three people in the village of Do Kay had died of AIDS. Now, with huge percentages of Haitians exposed to HIV, the picture must certainly look different. This book is a geat candidate for a revised edition some time in the future.
Informative and thought provoking.......2000-01-04
I read this book for a medical anthropology class and found it incredibly interesting in its discussion of the politics and racism involved in the US treatment of AIDS in Haiti. It delves into how the American presence and influences lead to and exasperated the widespread AIDS and poverty problems in Haiti.
Informative and thought provoking.......2000-01-04
I read this book for a medical anthropology class and found it incredibly interesting in its discussion of the politics and racism involved in the US treatment of AIDS in Haiti. It delves into how the American presence and influences lead to and exasperated the widespread AIDS and poverty problems in Haiti.
Customer Reviews:
Homesteaders Treasure.......2000-12-18
Traditional Home Remedies is exactly as the title claims. This fantastic book is filled with remedies, healing folklore, and basic how-to instructions for nearly every ailment under the sun. It's a valuable resource for those of us who consider doctors the very last measure. The chapters cover: Kitchen Gardens & Medicinal Herbs, Infusions, Decoctions & Tinctures, Poultices, Salves & Ointments, Elixirs, Tonics & Aphrodisiacs, Food for Health & Well-Being, Women's Complaints, Midwifery & the Moon, Aromatics to Calm & Revive, Caution & Common Sense This book has remedies for earaches, kidney complaints, menstrual cramps, yeast infections, and so on. A definate must have for families large and small.
Average customer rating:
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Book Description
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Book Description
Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor. This "peculiarly modern inequality" that permeates AIDS, TB, malaria, and typhoid in the modern world, and that feeds emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases such as Ebola and cholera, is laid bare in Farmer's harrowing stories of sickness and suffering.
Challenging the accepted methodologies of epidemiology and international health, he points out that most current explanatory strategies, from "cost-effectiveness" to patient "noncompliance," inevitably lead to blaming the victims. In reality, larger forces, global as well as local, determine why some people are sick and others are shielded from risk. Yet this moving account is far from a hopeless inventory of insoluble problems. Farmer writes of what can be done in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, by physicians determined to treat those in need. Infections and Inequalities weds meticulous scholarship with a passion for solutions--remedies for the plagues of the poor and the social maladies that have sustained them.
Customer Reviews:
careless errors, mediocre conclusion.......2006-06-15
By claiming "social reform," Farmer contradicts his stance as an American citizen: Haiti has no money to support its own citizens, that's why the US and others are doing Haiti's job. But, the US has to care for its own citizens as well therefore has to first work on its own AIDS patients within its boundary. If the US does that as its social reform, Haiti instantly dries up.
Irritating mistakes somehow got through inspection: PAligre Dam? PEligre? (P. 174) PuertO Plata? PueltA? (P. 119)
Medical-anthropological approach to HIV & TB illuminates roles of inequality and poverty in spread of disease.......2005-07-11
Farmer, a physician-anthropologist and activist, examines both the way that poverty and inequality result in the spread of HIV and TB today and the flawed justifications for inequitable access to treatment. His ethnographic analysis provides a powerful complement to standard epidemiological work, and this treatise on the danger as well as the immorality of inequity in medical care is largely convincing.
Farmer illustrates several broad themes effectively with case studies from Haiti and Peru. One is the idea that most studies overemphasize individual agency, failing to recognize serious "structural" factors, such as the pressure that extreme poverty exerts on people to engage in unhealthy behaviors and the problems introduced by economic inequality. (One example of the latter is that in unequal countries like Peru, second-line TB drugs are available because of demand by the rich, so doctors also prescribe them to the poor who can only afford them intermittently, which generates drug-resistant strains of the disease.) Another theme is that people in rich nations tend to place heavy weight on "strange" cultural beliefs and customs in explaining high disease prevalence, whereas actual epidemiological research tends to show that these factors carry little weight relative to poverty-related factors. While he uses AIDS in Haiti to illustrate this tendency, it applies perfectly to popular Western conceptions of AIDS in Africa: the popular media tend to emphasize cultural practices such as wife inheritance and a strong sex drive, whereas epidemiological research fails to support a major role for these.
A third theme, which Farmer often trumpets but not as convincingly, is that many of the trade-offs voiced by policymakers are ultimately false. One example is the question of whether to treat tuberculosis with drugs or prevent it (e.g., by investing in economic development). He then uses the success of his clinic in Haiti as an example of both treating and preventing TB. The ultimate argument is that the wealthy have no right to withhold their wealth from the poor. However, he gives us no clear sense of how the resources to generalize this to the world at large should be marshaled. While the trade-off may be philosophically false, the practical application is unclear.
But even without a plan of action, Farmer illuminates key problems in the analysis of infectious disease spread and makes a convincing plea to share the wealth (and the technology).
Wonderful etiological analysis, but unfounded conclusions. .......2004-07-24
Anyone in the public health arena has heard (or even read) of Paul Farmer. The Harvard MD/PhD (Anthropolgy) is indeed a passionate and competant professional who has fresh drive and leads a commendable life in service to humanity. This book seems to be his most popular work (at least on campus of major public health colleges) and it deserves attention and analysis.
Farmer gives systematic treatment of HIV and TB etiology and prevalence in the US and Haiti. More importantly, how those diseases affect the poor in inequitable ways. Peppered with intimate anecdotes and cutting analysis, the book brings hard ideas with the immediacy of the individual plight. He debunks myth of AIDS early history and establishes perspetive for the disease to be viewed/studied in light of the poor and the strucutral violence that (he deems) causes the propensity of the disease in the lower levels of society. He offers solutions and pleas for attention to these 'new plagues' so that the effects can be mitigated for the sake of all humanity.
There are some issues with that perspective. Of course every author brings inherent bias to the writing (either intentional or not), but Farmer makes no apology for his worldview and dismisses opinions of others who are even within the sientific community as he. John Stuart Mill (in "On Liberty") would say that such an attitude is likened to assuming infallibility (which Farmer more or less accuses the attitude of the 'rich' toward the modern plagues). His neo-Marxist tendency completely undermines the state of the world and he therefore addresses his problems from a "the way it should be" approach. That is his prerogative, but taking such an attitude means that his ideas will remain just that: ideas. His lack of pragmatism borders a silent taint of militarism and that approach rarely attracts policy makers, even those on the left.
Farmer assumes that a preponderence of evidence precludes a serious analysis of personal aganecy. No one would argue the conflict of structural violence and the inherent effects on personal agency. Yet, the fact remains that it does exist and it at least needs to be addressed in a thorough matter in order to be a fair treatment of the subject matter.
Furthermore, he needed to address the distal factors (i.e etiology and biology of the diseases) with the proximate (i.e. socio-econimics, etc...) for the book to be of more interest to the lay person. Despite my reservations, it is still a great book to get the reader "out of the box" and see AIDS and TB with the urgency it deserves. Yet, this type of book needs to be in the hands of the lay, and this recommendation would help.
Lastly, Farmer claims on several occasions a foundation of political economy in the analysis of his subject. He is a physician and anthropologist, and without the concurrent opinions of a political-economist to back up his claims, the ideas therein are weak at best. His political-economic opinions may be in line with greats like Marx and Henry George, but he cannot assume the validity of his assumptions just by telling the readership he his resting on such evidence. Several other leading political-economic ideas stand in direct opposition to his conclusions of goverment fixing all health problems to his liking.
All in all, it is hard not to be moved by Farmer's compelling treatment of such horrendous plagues on humanikind. Yet, passion does not always equal pragmatic and working solutions. Therefore, his work will hopefully inspire those who can take his passion to offer clear and viable solutions in the war on these plagues.
Michael Jewell, MPH
Shining a Light.......2004-01-02
Dr. Farmer sums up what you can hear in his lectures (he is an amazing speaker), read in journals, and hear in his interviews: The "modern day plagues" result directly from Structural Violence. I read this book for my culture and health class and could not put it down. He writes with an eloquence unheard of in most anthropologists while at the same time with the passion of a deeply concerned physician. Although in some points the book can get repetitive (as case studies overlap) it is a spectacular, enlightening read that I would recommend to anyone, particularly potential (and current) medical anthropologists.
Complex causality: why people are really at risk for disease.......2000-06-08
Finally Dr. Farmer couples his lucid historical, political and economic analyses of the conditions that put the poor at risk for bad health outcomes, with a plainly indignant calling out of healthcare professionals and healthcare organizations to make honest efforts to understand and remedy conditions which would never be tolerated among the well off in Western nations. In his goundbreaking, earlier books, "AIDS and Accusations," and "The Uses of Haiti," Dr. Farmer matter of factly discusses the global and local structural conditions and misrepresentations which led to the spread of disease and persistent, dismal health conditions in Haiti. In "Infections and Inequality," Dr. Farmer adds moral overtones to incisive, sociopolitical analysis and his characteristic accounts of individuals suffering from disease. The book consequently provides a powerful reflection from a man who has worked in some of the world's poorest regions on what the benefits of medical technology mean for people who have not traditionally had access to them. A powerful, informative read that clearly reflects the years of experience of a physician who has wrestled with the global responsibility of caring for the those who are worst off. An obligatory read for anyone even thinking of working for the impoverished of the world.
Books:
- Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
- New Moon (Twilight, Book 2)
- Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics and the Production of Entropy: Life, Earth, and Beyond (Understanding Complex Systems)
- Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values (Nonviolent Communication Guides)
- Peasants and Lords in Modern Germany: Recent Studies in Agricultural History
- Photovoltaic Systems Engineering, Second Edition
- Planet Earth: As You've Never Seen It Before
- Planet Earth: As You've Never Seen It Before
- Radiative Heat Transfer
- Salad Bar Beef
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Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues
Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology, 4)
The Uses Of Haiti
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
