Book 1 down

Last night, I finished book #1 - Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.

This book is a biography of Dr. Paul Farmer, starts and ends in Cange, Haiti, where he started his life's work of bringing healthcare to the poorest of the world.  Dr. Farmer took a novel approach of not just treating someone's illness but treating the underlying lifestyle that led to the illness - in Haiti, he would treat the tuberculosis, then visit the victim in their home, often finding a family with tuberculosis, and that they were living 10 in a one room shack, so he would cajole money from somewhere to build them a larger home, put a floor and a roof on that home, which they did not have before, build a school so the children could be educated, provide a job at Zanmi Lasante, the clinic compound, and so on.  As a medical student then resident, and later attending physician at Duke, Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital, he continued to travel to Haiti, and often carried samples back to Boston with him to diagnose illnesses, then would finagle the medications to treat the patient.  In 1987 he cofounded Partners in Health, and slowly the efforts of him and PIH expanded, to Peru, then Russia, and beyond, and literally revamped the treatment of TB by recognizing the huge threat represented by MDR or Multi-Drug-Resistant TB. 
I found the book to be a thought provoking but relatively easy read.  It held my interest, which is not surprising given my interest in the scientific and medical realm.