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Everything Is Tuberculosis

The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

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Everything Is Tuberculosis

By: John Green
Narrated by: John Green
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

© John Green 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Contagious Diseases History History & Philosophy Physical Illness & Disease Science Respiratory Disease

Critic Reviews

Earnest and empathetic
Everything Is Tuberculosis doesn’t so much tell you the story of tuberculosis, as much as it gently holds your hand and parts the curtains into one of the darkest, most bizarre, and frustrating series of decisions in world history with the other... A quintessential John Green book: one that grapples with the issue of mortality and our conflicting desires to both help and hurt one another, all within the backdrop of the coming of age of a young man
Green uses the stories of real people to turn overwhelming problems into something personal and understandable.
This highly readable call to action could not be more timely
Henry’s story is hopeful and heartbreaking; readers will be rooting for him and his family the whole way through
Green writes expertly of the illness’s history, causes (malnutrition, poverty, bad sanitation, etc.), and cure… Insightful and extremely well and clearly written, Everything Is Tuberculosis makes what might be inaccessible accessible
In these challenging times, the global health community is fortunate to count on Green and his inspiring advocacy
A story of hope and tragedy that feels terribly relevant at a time when the global healthcare system is coming under attack.
An exceptional combination of memoir, medical history and cultural analysis…. Memorably probes the intersections of medicine and human emotion
All stars
Most relevant
Novelist, YouTuber and observer John Green presents a history of the treatment of tuberculosis and the people it has affected. While this book starts with some wide-ranging trivia relating to the historical influence of TB, and returns there occasionally, central to the book is the story of the treatment of TB, and the story of one family affected by it. John Green presents this with all the humanity you'd expect from a man who "fell into" an interest in tuberculosis while visiting a school he helped to fund. A great listen.

On hope, humanity and tuberculosis

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Compelling. Well read and well written. This was worth waiting for. Bravo John, and bravo Henry Rider.

Nailed it

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A fascinating, thoroughly researched and beautifully presented study of TB. Like many people, I give it little thought from my comfortable life in a society where health care is taken for granted. My eyes are open and I am recruited to the cause.

Think you know about TB? Think again!

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I'm sad the book ended too quickly, I enjoy his perspective.
Awful truth of inquity with a hopeful outlook as always from John.

Beautifully hopeful

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The only reason I started this book was a love of John Green's YouTube videos and his book The Anthropocene Reviewed. Why did I keep listening, hours in? Because of Henry Reider and his mother, Isatu.

I'm ashamed to admit that, prior to reading this book, I thought of Tuberculosis as a 19th century disease. Of course, you'd hear about it from time to time, but much like Ebola, it seemed like a problem that was distant - separate from the 21st century world.

Tuberculosis is a here and now problem. It highlights the role racism and socio-economics plays in global health inequalities.

This isn't a niche essay on the history and impacts of Tuberculosis in society. This is a book for all of us. It's a book about injustice, humanity and creating spirals of virtue.

This is a book for all of us

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