Tracy Kidder

Biography

American nonfiction writer, a Harvard graduate of 1967 and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The Soul of a New Machine (1981), an account of the Data General team racing to build the Eagle minicomputer, won both the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He went on to write House, Among Schoolchildren, Mountains Beyond Mountains and Rough Sleepers, all built on long immersion in ordinary professions and institutions. He died in Boston on 24 March 2026.