Tracy Kidder Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Tracy Kidder is an American nonfiction writer.

He was born in New York City on November 12, 1945. He is known for putting together literary narrative with journalistic precision. The author first became known with the 1981 release of his book The Soul of a New Machine, an account of computer engineers at Data General. The book won him the Pulitzer Prize and is noted for the insight that it has into the tech industry that was emerging at the time and the human stories that were behind all of the innovation.

Tracy would later get praise for his 2003 novel Mountains Beyond Mountains. It is the biography of Paul Farmer, a physician and a humanitarian. It further shored up the reputation that he had for putting together storytelling and social relevance.

The author attended English, where he studied English and would graduate from before then attending the University of Iowa. He would go through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and earned his MFA. His first book was considered a critical failure, but he came back with a series of successful works that looked into a variety of topics, such as home construction, elementary education, and aging.

Tracy also served in Vietnam. He notes that the war did not shape his writing in a significant way, even though he wrote some essays on the topic. He has won the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and many other different literary prizes.

Kidder became the first A.M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence in 2010 at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard. He wrote Good Prose there, his book on the topic of nonfiction writing. His work is still recognized for its good qualities to this day, including a commitment to the truth, narrative strength, and empathy. Today Kidder splits his time between Maine and Massachusetts.

A Truck Full of Money is a 2016 book by Tracy Kidder. It is a great book if you love what people such as Charles Duhigg are calling a ‘perfectly executed, exquisitely reported parable of the Internet age and the[…] adventure that is start-up culture’. Involving genius, philanthropy, mania, fortune and more, this is the story of Paul English, perhaps better known to many as the founder of Kayak.com and Lola.

Paul English was an inventor and an entrepreneur, a man as unconventional as he was kinetic. When he was younger, Paul took the time to rebel against authority. He grew up in Boston in the working class area, finding a medium for his talent from the very first time that he sets eyes upon a computer.

He was a young man and even though he was contending with a condition that would eventually be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, Paul starts his path through the ups and downs in the world of computers. He relates to the Internet as though it is an extension of his mind personally. Paul ends up finding out that he is very skilled at coming up with empires and putting together the teams that are able to develop them.

Right away, Paul’s unique and innovative management style, the success he has, and the way that he favors fair play end up inspiring lots of loyalty. Early on, one of his colleagues says that this guy is going to get hit by a truck full of money one day, and he’s going to be ‘standing beside him’.

The insight ends up being prophetic, and English does in fact go on to make his fortune upon his travel website Kayak being sold off, the sale reaching nearly two billion dollars. The first thing that the entrepreneur considers is how he can give the money away, followed by thoughts about what is next.

With the smoothness of a seasoned storyteller, this author brings the reader through a journey that they won’t soon forget. The author puts a critical, fresh and frequently humorous eye on the way that new money and ideas are shaping our culture and the world into something new. This is the picture of a man who is original, endearing, and unpredictable that you don’t want to miss. Check out the book that publications such as The New York Times promise will have you ‘admiring’ and ‘cheering for’ Mr. English.

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People is a New York Times bestseller by Tracy Kidder that is fascinating and endlessly interesting. Powerful and well-crafted, this is the story of a doctor who set out to make a difference through creating a program designed to help care for the homeless community in Boston. This is a book that people like Abraham Verghese were saying that they couldn’t put down and left them ‘inspired to do better’.

The Chicago Public Library even named it a best book of the year, as did BookPage and NPR. Tracy has often been described as a ‘master of the nonfiction narrative’. In Rough Sleepers, he proves it, as he relates to the reader the story of Doctor Jim O’Connell, a man who came up with a community of care for the unhoused population in the city, extending as well to the ‘rough sleepers’, the term for the people who end up sleeping on the streets.

Upon graduating from Harvard Medical School, O’Connell was coming to the end of his residency at Massachusetts General. As he did so, the chief of medicine at the hospital made a proposal to him, asking if he would choose to defer a fellowship so that he could instead spend a year assisting with creating an organization that could deliver health care to citizens without homes.

Jim said yes, and what started out as a single year transformed into the calling of a lifetime. Tracy spent five years following along with the doctor and his colleagues as they worked with thousands of patients, some of whom are featured in this book. He takes the reader along as he goes through the streets of the city at night, giving socks, soup, medical care, empathy, friendship and more to some of the vulnerable citizens of the area. He focuses on a type of medicine that is called ‘a system of friends’ where patients come first.

Intriguing and a real story, follow along with Tracy Kidder as he dives deep into Jim O’Connell’s efforts to help the homeless and be inspired yourself! Get a copy of Rough Sleepers to take the journey and see what you think.