Everything Is Tuberculosis

The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

De: John Green

Narrado por: John Green

#1 New York Times bestseller • #1 Washington Post bestseller • #1 Indie Bestseller • USA Today Bestseller

John Green, award-winning author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

AN ACCLAIMED BEST BOOK OF 2025: NPR, Scientific American, Science News, Booklist, BookPage, Chicago Sun-Times. Goodreads Readers’ Choice Nonfiction Winner.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu­manity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. 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 advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi­ties that allow this curable, preventable infec­tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a 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.

Nonfiction Literature

I initially bought this book because I was a fan of John Green and watched his YouTube channel sometimes. I now feel as though I have woken up and become a person in the world for the first time through the story of Henry and his struggle for treatment. The past becomes present, and I have come to realize that, as Green puts it, “Nothing is so privileged as to believe that history is in the past.”

TB: The past? More like the present.

“Nothing is so privileged as to think history is in the past.”

I can’t believe how much I didn’t know about TB. John Green isn’t kidding when he says “Everything is Tuberculosis.” Highly recommend picking this up. Also I can’t recommend the audiobook enough!!

Butterflies

Following the thread of cause and effect from a disease to major historical points and even our group psychology is fascinating.

Now more than ever

This book is a need to read. If you are living in a world where you get to choose to take medicine or to get a vaccine you must read this book and think more about the privilege you have in making that choice. Tuberculosis is a choice we continue to make and this history recounted in a way only John Green can is needed now more than ever so that we may choose to be and do better.

Informative and Entertaining

If you like reading interesting non fiction then this is the book for you. Interspersed with interesting history facts of tuberculosis with the author’s own personal anecdotes. This is a short read that could act as a jumping off point for further research and readings.