Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
4.5 | 7,201 ratings
Price: 11.81
Last update: 02-02-2026
Top reviews from the United States
- DalynahPerfectionI love this book, it’s so well written and John Green did a really good job of portraying things we wouldn’t see unless we were in his head. I recommend reading this book and the quality of the book is amazing including the signature.
- H. G. Heren IVCoughing Up the Truth: What We Choose to Ignore About TBJohn Green’s Everything Is Tuberculosis is a clear-eyed, deeply human, and at times mordantly witty examination of one of humanity’s most enduring killers. It serves as a reminder that tuberculosis is not a quaint affliction of bygone poets and coughing Victorians, but a still-rampant global threat—particularly in regions of the world we in the First tend to overlook until the microbes come knocking at our own sanitized doors.
Green skillfully traces TB’s arc through history: from its macabre glamorization as the “romantic disease” to its modern entrenchment as a marker of inequality, underfunded healthcare, and political apathy. The book excels in illustrating how society’s attitudes toward tuberculosis have shifted, often in lockstep with who the disease was affecting at the time. When TB struck the rich, it inspired poetry. When it settled into the lungs of the poor, it inspired silence.
Interwoven throughout are poignant personal narratives—individuals living with tuberculosis in the present day, largely ignored by the global North but very much at the mercy of the disease’s evolving strains and the systems (or lack thereof) meant to treat them. These stories ground the historical and scientific content in human experience, providing the book with emotional heft that statistics alone never could.
One of the book’s most striking themes is the dangerously short-sighted assumption that tuberculosis is a problem of the past or of somewhere else. Green warns of the consequences of that hubris: as drug-resistant strains of TB continue to develop in the Global South, they pose an ever-growing risk to the Global North. Diseases that were once beatable, or at least controllable, are mutating under the pressure of neglect, half-finished treatment courses, and inconsistent drug access. They are poised, Green suggests, to return more resistant and more lethal than ever. The microbial world is watching—and it has a long memory.
The book also steps into broader territory by raising questions about patient advocacy, global health priorities, and what it really means to declare a disease “solved.” Green is at his best when pointing out how the forgotten often stay forgotten—until their suffering becomes contagious in ways that threaten the powerful.
That said, one limitation of the book lies in its portrayal of pharmaceutical companies. While Green is right to criticize the profit-driven structure of modern drug development—particularly the neglect of diseases that mostly affect the poor—his framing sometimes veers into caricature. The book offers little acknowledgment of the immense time, risk, and capital required to bring a new drug to market, including the many failures that never result in a viable treatment. By painting Big Pharma solely as profit-hungry, Green risks overlooking the complexity of the system, including the real scientific innovation and legitimate economic challenges involved in drug development.
Still, Everything Is Tuberculosis remains a powerful and timely work. It’s a call to attention—and action—for a world too ready to forget that the battle against infectious disease is not won with one victory, but maintained with vigilance, equity, and an honest reckoning with the uncomfortable truth that some diseases persist simply because the people who have them don’t matter enough to those who don’t.
In sum, Everything Is Tuberculosis is informative, compassionate, and sharper than expected. It’s a wake-up call masquerading as a history book—a reminder that infectious disease is never truly in the past, only hiding in the places we’ve chosen not to look. - Richard P.Another Great Book From John GreenIn the kind of weird coincidence that would seemingly come out of film adapted from a John Green story, on the very day I was winding down my time with Green's "Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection," I received word that a longtime friend of mine had, in fact, been diagnosed with TB.
The good news for this friend, I suppose, is that she lives in the United States where both prevention and treatment for TB are both readily available. In all likelihood, she will easily survive this disease.
As is stated over and over again throughout "Everything Is Tuberculosis," many others will not survive the disease despite the fact that testing and treatment have been available since the 1950s and increasingly common and effective.
In Green's simplest terms, we have the ability to cure TB. We don't have the political will to do so.
For an author long recognized as one of the most popular YA novelists, it may seem surprising that Green would tackle a book on tuberculosis. I can't help but think those surprised have never really immersed themselves in Green's world, both literature and social media, as Green has long immersed himself in the ways that we're interconnected and the power that we have to change lives.
It's a theme that is common throughout "Everything Is Tuberculosis," a book that finds its heart-and-soul in the story of young Henry Reider, whom Green met at Sierra Leone's Lakka Government Hospital. Green avoids the saccharine romanticizing of Henry's story, instead constantly maintaining Henry's humanity as he fights to survive TB in a nation with only the barest minimum of treatments. In similar books, the author would dare to draw a connection between themselves and the character's outcome - Green is far too wise and has far too much integrity to do so. Instead, Green paints a vivid portrait of the struggle and the doctors working to do something about it against seemingly insurmountable odds.
We get to know Henry and we come to admire his fiercely loyal mother Isatu, a woman who works hours upon hours upon hours to raise funds for Henry's care. It's their story that serves as the emotional foundation for "Everything Is Tuberculosis," however, it's Green who tells the story with insight, intelligence, and compassion.
Green's approach to this story is surprisingly simple. Green focuses his storytelling lens on Henry and the various people he encounters, both other patients and medical professionals, along the way. However, Green also paints an engaging and convicting portrait of how TB became a disease associated with those who are economically poor and why no one is now doing anything about it despite the ability to do so.
"Everything Is Tuberculosis" is a weaving together of deep compassion, historical analysis, and rich yet accessible scientific analysis. Green's "Everything Is Tuberculosis" leans not just into the way things are but how they could be using the STP (Search, Treat, Prevent) framework. As a writer who's long used his social media presence for good (as a footless guy, I sure wish I needed socks), Green creates a framework for change and then gives us accounts of those who are slowly and frustratingly but most definitely creating that change.
As a creative and an activist who lives in Green's adopted hometown of Indianapolis, I think perhaps no statement in "Everything Is Tuberculosis" sums up Green as both writer and human being than a statement he makes in the book - "How can I accept a world where over a million people will die this year for want of a cure that has existed for nearly a century?"
Indeed, "Everything Is Tuberculosis" is a book about tuberculosis. It's also more. It's about who we are as human beings. It's about how we're connected and how we choose to disconnect. It's about the simple wonder of being human and the big and small ways we can make the world a better place if and when we choose to do so.
To his credit, though Green would likely be hesitant to take such credit, "Everything Is Tuberculosis" ultimately makes us want to do so. - ShawnaGreat easy read, with short stories.I've been a fan of John Green forever, and have read all of his books. The way he writes really is insightful but not over done. His way of story telling whether it be a YA novel, Fiction or Non-Fiction, he writes "user friendly". So very well written for literature lovers and a great storyteller all in all. This book explores stories of not just the past but also current issues with the disease and the medical system as a whole. It's really interesting insight to read about how this illness shaped healthcare facilities and it's link to so many people and things in our history. How it's so different between care in different parts of the world. I really enjoyed this book and recommend John Green to anyone who loves stories.