Tracy Kidder

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Tracy Kidder

John Tracy Kidder (born November 12, 1945 in New York City ) is an American book author .

Kidder studied at Harvard , where he got his bachelor's degree in 1967. He then worked as a lieutenant in Vietnam until 1969 and then studied creative writing at the famous Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa ; he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1974 . Soon after, his longstanding work for The Atlantic Monthly began . He is married and lives in Massachusetts .

His book The Soul of a New Machine (1981) earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1982 and made him known worldwide. In it, he describes the work of a development team led by Tom West, who at Data General developed a new minicomputer (Eclipse MV / 8000, project name Eagle ) that came onto the market in 1980. It is considered a prime example of a report from the world of the computer industry.

In Mountains beyond Mountains (2003) he describes the efforts of the American medical doctor and anthropologist Paul Farmer to build a health system for the poorer population in Haiti. Kidder first portrayed him in 2000 for The New Yorker and developed his book, published in 2003, from this. In Strength in what remains he tells the story of a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda who, thanks to private help from US Americans, finds shelter in New York, studies medicine there and later founded a clinic in Burundi . In Old Friends (1993) he tells the stories and coexistence of the residents of a retirement home in Northampton, Massachusetts, a small town that he also describes in his book Home Town (1999). He also wrote books documentary about the experiences of new homeowners ( The House , 1985, dt. The house ) and the experience of a school teacher in Massachusetts ( Among Schoolchildren , 1989), that the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award was awarded. He describes his Vietnam experiences in My Detachment .

Works

  • The soul of a new machine ( The Soul of a New Machine ), Birkhauser, Basel [ua] 1982, ISBN 3-7643-1341-2 , Paperback Rowohlt 1984
  • Das Haus , Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-498-03448-0 .
  • Old Friends 1993
  • Among Schoolchildren , Avon Books, 1990, ISBN 0380710897 (English)
  • Home Town , Random House, 1999, ISBN 0671785214 (English)
  • Mountains Beyond Mountains: Healing the World: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer , Random House, 2003, ISBN 0375506160 (English)
  • My Detachment - a memoir , Random House 2004
  • Mein Weg nach Amahoro , Munich, Kailash Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-3-424-63029-9 (English original: Strength in What Remains , Random House 2009)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Evan Ratliff Oh Engineers! , Wired 2000 . Looking back after 20 years. While most of the engineers described there (including Steve Wallach ) left the company in the early 1980s, Tom West stayed with Data General until it was taken over by EMC in 1999
personal data
SURNAME Kidder, Tracy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kidder, John Tracy (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City