Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

John Green

Enjoyment: 4.5Quality: 4.5Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0

John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease. Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it. In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year. In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.


From the Forum
  • Thoughts from 24% (end of Ch. 4)

    "Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past" Excellent so far, I really love John's writing style and how he is weaving the many stories of TB together to form the overall narrative.

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  • Haushinkuh
    Mar 27, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: 5.0Characters: Plot:

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  • PinkeyPie43
    Mar 22, 2025
    Enjoyment: 3.0Quality: 2.5Characters: Plot:

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  • readbyjordyn
    Mar 25, 2025
    Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0

    "Ultimately we are the cause. We must also be the cure." John weaves countless stories across history to expertly help us understand how Everything is Tuberculosis. I learnt so much from this short, quick read - we cover basically every topic under the sun. Highly recommend, even if you think you have no interest in tuberculosis, you're going to come out realising that you do.

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