Review of Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of our Deadliest Infection by John Green

Green's book is about tuberculosis, but it's also a view of our deep global interconnectedness, gross healthcare inequalities, the TB devastation that is still prevalent, and the possibility of both simple and comprehensive approaches that could eradicate the disease.

The world we share is a product of all the worlds we used to share. For me at least, the history and present of tubercuosis reveal the folly an brilliance and cruelty and compassion of humans.

Is it strange that I was so fascinated by a book about tuberculosis that I kept setting it aside so that I wouldn't finish it? Not if the book in question is by the whip-smart exhaustive researcher and word wizard John Green. My copy of this book filled with tabs marking notable passages.

...I knew nothing about TB. To me, it was a disease of history--something that killed depressive nineteenth-century poets, not present-tense humans. But as a friend once told me, "Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past."

In John Green's nonfiction book Everything Is Tuberculosis, he tells his story of befriending a young man, Henry, who was suffering from tuberculosis and living in a hospital in Sierra Leone.

Green uses his tender eye and piercing analysis to explore the health care inequalities that allow the world's poorest citizens to disproportionately contract the incurable disease tuberculosis and to advocate for greater access to quality care and a search for a cure.

Tens of millions of people died of tuberculosis in those years. In face, between 1985 and 2005, roughly as many people died of tuberculosis as in World Wars I and II combined.

In Green's insightful hands, he illustrates how the modern-day fight against TB--with conflicts about pricing, tragically skewed accessibility, powerful perceptions of cultures' inability to adhere to protocols, and devastating gaps in care--is also a look at greater global issues.

Green makes the situation personal, following the cases of real people, tracking roadblocks to care, exploring potential simple and complex solutions, and challenging assumptions that hinder progress in each of these areas. The situation around TB is a public health travesty, and it's devastating and heartbreaking--and, Green poses, solvable.

We cannot address TB only with vaccines and medications. We cannot address it only with comprehensive STP programs. We must also address the root cause of tuberculosis, which is injustice. In a world where everyone can eat, and access healthcare, and be treated humanely, tuberculosis has no chance. Ultimately, we are the cause.

We must also be the cure.

More from the Wonderful John Green

John Green is also the author of the nonfiction collection of essays The Anthropocene Reviewed (which was one of my six favorite nonfiction reads the year I read it) as well as the young adult novels An Abundance of Katherines, Turtles All the Way Down, The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns.