To Repair the World
Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Here, for the first time, is a collection of short speeches by the charismatic doctor and social activist Paul Farmer. One of the most passionate and influential voices for global health equity and social justice, Farmer encourages young people to tackle the greatest challenges of our times. Engaging, often humorous, and always inspiring, these speeches bring to light the brilliance and force of Farmer’s vision in a single, accessible volume.
A must-read for graduates, students, and everyone seeking to help bend the arc of history toward justice, To Repair the World:
• Challenges readers to counter failures of imagination that keep billions of people without access to health care, safe drinking water, decent schools, and other basic human rights;
• Champions the power of partnership against global poverty, climate change, and other pressing problems today;
• Overturns common assumptions about health disparities around the globe by considering the large-scale social forces that determine who gets sick and who has access to health care;
• Discusses how hope, solidarity, faith, and hardbitten analysis have animated Farmer’s service to the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Russia, and elsewhere;
• Leaves the reader with an uplifting vision: that with creativity, passion, teamwork, and determination, the next generations can make the world a safer and more humane place.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Farmer, Harvard professor and founder of Partners in Health, offers an anthology of 19 speeches on global health initiatives delivered between 2001 and 2012. Since his med school days in the 1980s, Farmer has been committed to building a viable health care system in Haiti. On January 12, 2010, he witnessed the devastating earthquake in Port-au-Prince and participated in the rescue effort. Despite self-deprecating remarks about being the "terminally unhip" successor of commencement speakers like Ali G, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bono, and Will Ferrell, Farmer has addressed top-tier institu-tions like Oxford, Brown, and Johns Hopkins. Divided into four sections, the book opens with the sub-ject of social injustice in medical care, explores the future of medicine and "instruments of mass salva-tion" following natural disasters, and closes on the issue of human suffering. Addressing "insignificant others" along with newly-minted public servants, he urges today's graduates to become "accom-pagnateurs" a Creole term he uses to describe a committed doctor. While Farmer admits to sermon-izing, readers will emerge with a heightened sense of the responsibilities and sacrifices required of fu-ture public servants.