Kidder meets Farmer in Haiti, where Farmer confronts a US Special Forces captain about a political beheading and American economic reforms.

Kidder visits Farmer at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where Farmer diagnoses a homeless HIV-positive man with pneumonia and secures him housing.

Kidder travels to Zanmi Lasante in Cange and witnesses the hospital's free, comprehensive medical care serving over 100,000 people.

Farmer first visits Cange as a young student and finds a refugee colony of obviously ill people living without even tin roofs.

Farmer founds Partners in Health with Ophelia Dahl as financial manager, Tom White as investor, and Jim Yong Kim as vice chairman.

The Haitian military ousts Aristide and places Farmer on a banned flight list, severely disrupting Zanmi Lasante's outreach programs.

After Aristide's reinstatement, Farmer returns to Haiti and the Zanmi Lasante hospital is completed under Father Lafontant.

Father Jack Farmer contracts tuberculosis in Peru and dies, with his sample revealing resistance to all five standard first-line drugs.

Farmer concludes that the WHO-endorsed DOTS program is itself driving drug-resistant TB strains in Peru through repeated ineffective treatment.

Farmer and Kidder fly to Cuba for an AIDS conference, and Farmer warns Kidder that publishing critical views of his work would harm his patients.

Farmer and Kidder visit Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where Farmer finds hundreds of untreated TB cases and calls the situation catastrophic.

PIH secures a major grant from the Gates Foundation for its anti-tuberculosis program and sells its offices to fund antiretrovirals for Haitian patients.

John, a young Haitian boy, undergoes an expensive medevac flight to Boston, but doctors discover his cancer has spread too far to cure.

Serena Koenig's devotion to John's care prompts Massachusetts General Hospital to establish a formal partnership with Partners in Health.

Farmer tells Kidder that considering some lives expendable is the root of all that is wrong with the world.

This pool traces the central arc of Mountains Beyond Mountains, from Tracy Kidder's unexpected encounter with Paul Farmer during a US military mission in Haiti to the doctor's final declaration that treating some lives as expendable is the root of the world's problems. It covers Farmer's first arrival in Cange, the founding of Partners in Health, and the political violence that twice forced him out of Haiti. The pool follows PIH's expansion into Peru, where Farmer's investigation exposes the WHO's own tuberculosis program as a driver of drug resistance. It then tracks Farmer's diplomatic travels to Cuba and Russia as he fights to expand treatment for the world's poorest patients. The pool closes with the costly and heartbreaking case of a Haitian boy with cancer, which crystallizes Farmer's philosophy that no patient is expendable.

The headline events of Paul Farmer's quest to cure the world's poorest patients.

Kidder and Farmer share a flight back to the US, where Farmer corrects Kidder's assumption that a political beheading in Haiti relates to Voodoo.

Farmer shows Kidder the Péligre Dam and explains that its reservoir is flooded farmland that displaced poor central valley residents.

Farmer's family lives in a converted tuberculosis bus and a makeshift boat on Florida's west coast during his childhood.

Farmer's father works at a Florida citrus farm, where young Farmer first encounters the harsh conditions facing Haitian migrant workers.

Farmer studies at Duke University, earns excellent grades, embraces the wealthy lifestyle of his peers, and spends two terms studying in Paris.

Farmer meets volunteer Ophelia Dahl in Haiti and rapidly learns Creole while educating her about Haitian history and culture.

Tom White contacts Farmer after reading his anthropology paper and becomes PIH's primary financial backer and closest confidant.

Aristide wins Haiti's first free democratic election, but militants threaten Farmer because of his close friendship with the resistance leader.

Farmer earns both his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees and receives a MacArthur genius grant, donating the prize money to Zanmi Lasante.

Farmer treats a mutilated Aristide sympathizer who dies from militia attacks, then writes an anonymous article in a Boston newspaper about the violence.

Farmer's early research confirms that patients who receive a small monthly stipend alongside medication complete their treatment far more reliably.

Kidder travels with Farmer to Carabayllo, Peru, where Farmer reviews MDR patient samples and builds his case against the DOTS system.

Farmer and Kidder visit Cuba's quarantine site with an infectious disease official, and Kidder grows uneasy with Farmer's uncritical praise of Cuba's AIDS response.

Farmer and Kidder stay in Paris for his daughter's birthday, and Farmer discusses weeping over a stillborn delivery only after becoming a father himself.

Zanmi Lasante's patient load quadruples after the United States curtails aid to Aristide's government, and Farmer considers abandoning his globetrotting schedule.

This pool focuses on the significant but often overlooked events that shaped Paul Farmer and Partners in Health across the book's full arc. It opens with Kidder's early misunderstanding of Haiti's culture and follows Farmer's nomadic childhood, his first encounters with Haitian poverty, and the key allies who made his work possible. The pool tracks the political dangers Farmer faced under Haiti's military junta and the personal sacrifices his mission demanded. It then moves through PIH's expansion into Peru and Cuba, capturing moments that tested Farmer's relationships and his standing in the global medical community. The pool closes with Zanmi Lasante overwhelmed by a surge of patients after the United States sanctions Aristide, and Farmer wondering whether his globetrotting life is still sustainable.

The supporting moments that reveal how Farmer built his mission and faced its consequences.

Paul Farmer Sr. dies of a heart attack, and Farmer is found weeping over a letter in which his father congratulated his Harvard acceptance.

Farmer quits his fraternity at Duke University after refusing to accept its whites-only membership policies.

Farmer fails to save a malaria-stricken woman and her unborn child because the rural hospital has no blood transfusion capability.

Farmer raises money for a blood bank at Hôpital St. Croix but abandons the project upon learning that patients would have to pay for donated blood.

Farmer steals a microscope from Harvard rather than build the WHO-recommended solar model, citing Father Lafontant's lesson that simpler technology punishes the poor.

Ophelia Dahl rejects Farmer's marriage proposal and takes a financial role at PIH instead, eventually reconciling and becoming his confidant.

Farmer's Ph.D. thesis argues that American sex tourists, not Voodoo rituals, introduced AIDS into Haiti.

Farmer smuggles money to the Haitian resistance and openly defies junta soldiers, relying on his status as the only capable doctor in the plateau.

The junta bans Farmer a second time after he publishes a pro-intervention editorial and The Uses of Haiti, exposing US backing of Haitian dictators.

Peruvian medical authorities force PIH to follow standard DOTS protocols and deny MDR patients alternative treatment until two full rounds of DOTS are completed.

At a Boston tuberculosis conference, the WHO introduces a DOTS-plus program that officially incorporates PIH's protocols for treating drug-resistant strains.

Jim Yong Kim convinces the WHO to classify second-line TB drugs as essential medications, and the Green Light Committee is formed to regulate their use.

Farmer tells Kidder in Paris that France and Haiti cannot be treated as separate worlds, since one nation's prosperity is tied to the other's suffering.

Farmer convinces the World Bank to allocate half its Russian anti-TB loan to the Ministry of Justice by arguing that prison TB will spread to outside communities.

Ti Jean tells Farmer that his nest is Haiti, and Kidder learns that most Voodoo ceremonies are about healing, shifting his entire view of the country.

This pool gathers the pivotal decisions, moral reckonings, and revelations that shaped both Paul Farmer and Partners in Health from the book's earliest backstory to its final pages. It begins with the personal losses and ethical refusals that set Farmer on his path, including his rejection of comfortable compromise and his insistence on building a hospital that would never charge for care. The pool follows his battles against a military junta that twice exiled him and the discovery that the global health establishment's own approved treatment was making tuberculosis worse. It captures the diplomatic breakthroughs that lowered drug prices worldwide and Farmer's confrontation with his own emotional blind spots during the globetrotting chapters. The pool closes with Farmer's collaborator Ti Jean naming Haiti as Farmer's true home, and Kidder's realization that most Voodoo ceremonies are not about darkness but about healing.

The decisive moments and hard-won discoveries that define Farmer's philosophy and legacy.