Tracy Kidder

Tracy Kidder was an American writer of narrative nonfiction. Born in New York City in 1945, he attended Harvard, served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and studied at the University of Iowa. He began contributing to The Atlantic in 1973 and later wrote about his military service in My Detachment. He died in 2026 at age 80.

Kidder built books through patient reporting and extended observation. His subjects ranged from a fifth-grade classroom in Among Schoolchildren and a nursing home in Old Friends to home construction in House. Again and again, he examined how people work: the pride, compromises and private ambitions hidden inside professions and institutions.

The Soul of a New Machine follows engineers racing to develop a computer at Data General. Published in 1981, it won both the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and a National Book Award. Kidder later reached another generation with Mountains Beyond Mountains, his account of physician Paul Farmer’s work in global health. His other books include Home Town, Strength in What Remains, A Truck Full of Money and Rough Sleepers.

Start with The Soul of a New Machine. It turns debugging, deadlines and corporate rivalry into a sharply drawn human story, introducing Kidder’s gift for making specialized work intelligible without losing sight of the people doing it.