Despite suffering from what was eventually diagnosed as bi-polar disorder, he discovered in himself a genius for building teams and conceiving the innovative enterprises that could employ them. He belonged to what one of the world’s greatest living computer scientists, Donald Knuth, calls “the 2 percent”: people with a special talent for programming, a talent that had lain dormant for millennia in a fraction of humanity, waiting for its very instrument - the computer - to be invented.īut Paul English was more than a brilliant programmer. It became clear early in his life that Paul English was a member of an elite class. With the skill of a natural storyteller - “master of the craft of nonfiction narrative” (The Baltimore Sun) – Tracy Kidder takes us on a pilgrim’s fascinating journey through the technological revolution of the last 30 years.

He had a mind for the age that lay ahead. Paul English grew up in working-class Boston in the 1970s, a boy who rebelled against authority, but discovered a world that called out to his talents the first time he saw a computer. I would never recommend against reading a book by Kidder.Tracy Kidder – author of The Soul of a New Machine and Mountains Beyond Mountains – now brings us the spirited life of an American original, the engrossing story of an inventive, kinetic, and generous man who faces what seems like an enviable problem: How to deal with great success. My judgment on this point is obviously subjective, but given the factual details of English's life, I believe Kidder portrays English more positively than the facts warrant.Įach reader will need to become her or his own judge. English told Kidder 'You have to promise not to make me look better than I am,' English told Kidder, an unprecedented admonition in Kidder's career as an author. Kidder's portrayal of English certainly does not approach saintliness. The portrayal of Paul Farmer is almost saintly in Mountains Beyond Mountains. Yet the near-saintliness never bothered me, because if any human being deserves such admiration, Farmer would objectively seem to qualify. Kidder thanks English for being 'invariably courteous and forthcoming.' Understandably, such close contact might lead to skewed portrayals, overly positive or overly negative. Because Kidder has found ways to immerse himself in the daily lives of his main subjects perhaps more than any other biographer I am aware of, it is natural that Kidder would form close relationships.

A truck full of money by tracy kidder