Medicine has become increasingly depersonalized. Patients complain of being treated like numbers. Doctors resent being cogs in a complex healthcare system. Yet enthusiasm remains within the high towers of academia, the halls of government, and the corporate boardrooms of insurance companies, for a new medical field known as "population medicine." Population medicine seeks to improve "population health" and presents an ambitious program founded on elaborate theories developed over the last few decades.

Moving Mountains provides a highly entertaining critical examination of the...