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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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Summary

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

Nailed it

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Like a long-form version of John's Anthropocene Reviewed podcast, we see the Author's brilliance and ability to cultivate deep human emotion extend beyond the format of Fiction. In fact, his style lends itself so perfectly to marrying a vastly historical and global phenomena with the most deep and intimate of personal narratives - your heart will ache and sing as your brain tries to understand the sheer scale of what has afflicted (and continues to afflict) the people on this planet for millennia. I give Everything is Tuberculosis ... Five Stars

Classic Green

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This was such a good and important book. I don't have many words, but John Green brings so many important points to the surface when it comes to how Tuberculosis is seen and the human cost of the cost/benefit schemes. Anyway, I highly recommend this book.

such a good and important book

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well researched and well told look into TB. makes strong arguments for better and more just delivery of global health

thoroughly recommend

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A compelling book that details the subtleties of the Tuberculosis disease, what causes it to be such a perpetual problem and the shines light on the human cost.

Worth a listen to gain an understanding for what is distant problem far from the radar of most but life altering for so many.

Compelling Peek into the World's Most Devastating and Curable Diseases

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