Reader Rayna

Title: Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Author: John Green
Publisher: Crash Course Books
Publish Date: March 18, 2025
Genre: Non-Fiction Medical
Pages: 198 pages/6 hours
Format: Audiobook

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.

When I chose to listen to this audiobook, narrated by John Green himself, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I was listening to it other than information about tuberculosis. I hadn’t read the synopsis, and had only seen reviews from other people about how they felt after reading it. I will say, after reading it myself, I feel much more informed about this disease I never had to worry about given my socioeconomic status and general location in the world (and I was luckily given all my vaccinations as a child and growing up), and that this book had an underlying current of hope that I wasn’t expecting at all, but was pleasantly surprised by.

As a non-fiction book, this is a well-informed and researched, and we were told of the history of tuberculosis in the world and the course of humanity, and how we follow a teen in his journey with this curable and yet tragic disease. Now, I haven’t read many non-fiction books, and I definitely haven’t read any medical ones in my day. Green does list his resources at the end, talking about the impact of them and what each one signifies and stands for in his research on this disease he hyper focused on, so if I were curious to learn more, I can always go to that list to see what other scientists and others who have suffered the disease talk about and discuss.

There was also a surprising amount of heart strung throughout this book, from talking about Henry and his journey from childhood poverty and how the disease spread into his lungs at a young age, to how he lost his younger sister from a terrible tumor, to how his mom sacrificed so much and worked so hard to try and provide money just for the medical expenses that her children – then child – needed alone.

From tragedy to tragedy, learning the history of tuberculosis and how ancient the disease is, and how many names it has (“consumption” being one of them), was honestly eye opening to me. It put into perspective just what countries that aren’t rich or well off, especially medically, have to deal with due to corporate greed and an artificial number placed on medicines by companies that should really be focusing on the human that’s affected with the disease and not the top dollar.

There was a lot about socioeconomics in here that dealt with things like the importance of racism and how the disease spreads amongst minority and other vulnerable communities as a result of it, for instance. There was also a lot of emphasis on different time periods, and how during the 18th and 19th centuries, many poets and artists were seen as tragic and so enlightened and skilled as a result of the disease – and then later died as a result of said disease more often than not.

I found that listening to the audiobook made the content of the book very accessible and easy to digest. John Green has a way of reading and talking that feels like you’re in conversation with him, even though he’s literally just reading to you and you’re just listening. I found that the time passed by quickly and that even though this short book went by quickly, that there was plenty of information for me to glean in that short amount of time.

I honestly don’t know that I would have ever been interested in learning about something like tuberculosis before, but I’m glad I decided to listen to this on a whim. I feel a bit more informed and a bit more ready to take on the challenges of the world, whatever those may be.

Honestly, give this book a go if medical topics are something of an interest to you, or you want to break out of your comfort zone a bit and learn something new. You can find this audiobook via your local library, most likely (I borrowed it off of Libby, even though I also own the physical book itself), so give it a shot!

4.5 stars