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About Tracy Kidder

John Tracy Kidder (November 12, 1945 – March 24, 2026) was an American writer of nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for The Soul of a New Machine (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. Kidder received praise and awards for other works, including Mountains Beyond Mountains (2003), a biography of physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health.

Kidder was considered a literary journalist because of the strong story line and personal voice in his writing. He cited as his writing influences John McPhee, A. J. Liebling, and George Orwell. In a 1984 interview he said, "McPhee has been my model. He's the most elegant of all the journalists writing today, I think."

He wrote in a 1994 essay, "In fiction, believability may have nothing to do with reality or even plausibility. It has everything to do with those things in nonfiction. I think that the nonfiction writer's fundamental job is to make what is true believable."

Tracy Kidder writes about United States, New York Times reviewed, Large type books, Biography, History, and Case studies. Their best-known work is Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World.

On FindMyTBR we track 10 books by Tracy Kidder, 10 of them confirmed as audiobooks on Spotify or Apple Books — including A Truck Full of Money (Unabridged), Among Schoolchildren (Unabridged), and Good Prose : The Art of Nonfiction. Full availability across Spotify, Apple Books, Audible, and Amazon is below.