From a long reading list that’s circulating around PIH this summer, we’ve handpicked 12 books that we think our supporters would also enjoy, with comments from staff on why. For scholars and wonks, there are a few spectacularly researched books on the big questions in global health. For fiction fanatics, we’ve included a couple of novels based in places where PIH works. For everyone in-between, the list is mainly nonfiction, ranging from the indispensable Mountains Beyond Mountains to a story about a doctor bringing peace in a war zone. Below, our recommendations. Enjoy!
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Anne Fadiman
“This book is about a conflict between Western doctors and immigrant families, and their misunderstandings of each other. It is eye-opening, especially for someone with a health or medical background. In the United States, you’re brought up to believe that a doctor can’t be wrong, but this book challenges that.”
—Maya Guttman-Slater, executive assistant
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Paul Collier
“The Bottom Billion has become part of most global health programs’ curricula. It was published in 2007 but is still highly relevant almost 10 years later.”
—Katherine Underwood, senior development officer
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
Tracy Kidder
“After years of writing and editing articles on poverty-related issues, I was discouraged to see change happen so slowly. But Mountains Beyond Mountains confirmed to me that good storytelling can bring more people into this work, that words make a difference.”
—Molly Marsh, managing editor
Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones
Greg Campbell
“Blood Diamonds is a brutal but essential read for anyone interested in West Africa, and in understanding the complex political and economic factors of the diamond trade and how it contributed to a civil war, poverty, and health inequity.”
—Dr. Regan Marsh, medical director
The Memory of Love
Aminatta Forna
“In The Memory of Love, an elderly academic and a surgeon tell stories of loss to a British psychologist in Sierra Leone soon after the civil war. The book offers the reader a chance to reflect on war and its effects on mental health.”
—Caitlyn Bradburn, leadership training manager
When People Come First: Critical Studies in Global Health
João Biehl and Adriana Petryna
"I just finished When People Come First, a rich collection of cases that show how major decisions made in places like Washington, Geneva, and New York affect the world’s poorest and sickest people. It’s a call to interrogate claims advanced in the emerging field known as “global health” and their unintended (and even intended) consequences.”
—Ishaan Desai, research assistant
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Philip Gourevitch
“Although not strictly about global health, this book is an important and relevant analysis of Rwandan history and events leading up to the genocide. Gourevitch tells the stories of perpetrators, victims, and United Nations workers he met, and examines and criticizes the international community’s inadequate response as the massacre unfolded.”
—Adarsh Shah, community organizing fellow
Building Partnerships in The Americas: A Guide for Global Health Workers
edited by Margo Krasnoff
“If many of Paul Farmer's students had a party and stayed up all night talking, this is what it would sound like. The advice is real and raw.”
—Dr. Dan Palazuelos, co-founder of Compañeros En Salud (PIH in Mexico)
Epidemic City: The Politics of Public Health in New York
James Keith Colgrove
“This is a great read. It shows how complicated accessing health care can be even in a large U.S. city with functioning systems. Public health must address everything from poverty to bioterrorism.”
—Emily Dally, program officer
Blind Spot: How Neoliberalism Infiltrated Global Health
Salmaan Keshavjee
“Keshavjee’s Blindspot is the product of work he began 20 years ago in a remote area of Tajikistan, where he saw how the privatization of health services led people already living in poverty into even greater destitution. The policies were made by foreign donors and institutions that believed a market-based approach was the ‘sustainable’ way to provide health care. His book is hard evidence for why PIH believes that health care is a human right and that demand and supply don’t work for the world’s poorest people.”
—Sara Autori, executive assistant
I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity
Izzeldin Abuelaish
“Despite suffering a terrible loss, Abuelaish, a Palestinian physician, crosses the border each day from the Gaza Strip to work in Israeli hospitals. He treats anyone and calls for peace and understanding. It's what we talk about all the time at PIH—making sure everyone receives health care, regardless of where they come from.”
—Mika Matsuuchi, board coordinator
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
Bob Shacochis
“We first meet Jackie, a mysterious 20-something ethnobotanist, in Haiti in the 1990s. The novel then tracks her through conflict zones on multiple continents over a variety of decades. What is she up to? Who is she? While technically a spy novel, The Woman Who Lost Her Soul amounts to much more. It ends up a ferocious indictment of American imperialism, and a quiet, literary homage to people who help people, one-on-one, face-to-face.”
—Eric Hansen, writer and editor