Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
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UWCSEA Community Reviews
UWCSEA Community Reviews
Reviewer
Reviewer
It is 100% UWC. John Green writes this book beautifully, interweaving his own mental health struggles with a narrative that seeks to understand how tuberculosis killed over 1 million people last year...and every year before that going back centuries. History, science, and economics all collide in this fascinating, but infinitely readable attempt to understand how tuberculosis can still kill a million people a year in the 21st century. -jut
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This book is both a history of tuberculosis while at the same time following a young man's journey living with drug-resistant tuberculosis in Sierra Leone. It's interesting, engaging and a moving book about the different ways TB has been viewed throughout history and how it's still very much a big part of our world today. -vja
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If you don’t care about tuberculosis, read this to change your mind! The book explores the issue of global health inequity, but for a sombre topic, it’s a snappy and entertaining read with interesting nuggets of info (like the connection between TB and WWI or Victorian beauty standards). Those who enjoy John Green’s Crash Course series will appreciate the same nerd humour and lively tempo. -Erin, library team
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I was dubious at first, having only ever read John Green’s YA fiction. But I have to say, this is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. And I do agree, everything seems to connect, in some way, back to the disease of TB. The research, the connections, and the wider reflections on access, privilege, and how our world needs to shift to become more equitable are thought provoking. A real surprise. -nrk
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I just love John Green. -ane
198 pages
2025
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.
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