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The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
by John Green
Book Reviewed by:John Green, acclaimed author and passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world's deadliest infectious disease.
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.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/19/2026)
I enjoyed "Everything Is Tuberculosis" last week and found that I am becoming a huge John Green fan. I should be done with the very sad "Memorial Days" by Geraldine Brooks by tomorrow. I believe "Heart the Lover" by Lily King is next in the stack.
-Anthony_Conty
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/5/2026)
I finished "One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" and it floored me. Now, I am reading "Everything is Tuberculosis" and it has John Green's touch of humor in the face of sadness. Next in the stack is "Memorial Days" which is apparently also very sad.
-Anthony_Conty
What’s the best nonfiction book you read in 2025?
Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green. I learned so much from this book. The author's deep research was evident on every page. Having written several young adult best sellers including Lo...
-Lana_Maskus
Am I the only person who does this?
Haha, well, since you asked, @Jill_Mercier , I have time for two from the following list: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood A Drop of Corruption (second book in a sci-fi series by Robert Jackson Bennett I like) On the Calculation of Volume by S...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (12/18/2025)
...hat's rare enough that I'm not sure what direction I'll head. I bought a ton of books this year and I've read just a fraction of them. Leaning toward Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green, but also on the table are We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, and Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. (Probably because those are the l...
-kim.kovacs
What percentage of the books you’ve read this year have been nonfiction? Did you have a favorite?
John Green's audiobook just popped up on my Libby today. Have been waiting for Everything is Tuberculosis for awhile. Supposed to be very good.
-Gabi_J
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (11/27/2025)
...weirdest thing I've ever read and I don't know if I'll even know what I read when I finish it. On a more positive note, I just finished listening to Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green. My local librarian recommended it and I'm so glad she did. I learned so much. It is outstanding nonfiction that everyone should read for a better un...
-Lana_Maskus
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (11/13/2025)
...The Importance of Being Earnest. Needed an "I" for my book journal's A-Z Title Challenge. Quick, easy, fun, and breezy! Just started the audiobook of Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green and learning so much. Am reading Letters from a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart for a book discussion at a nearby library. It's made up o...
-Lana_Maskus
For decades, research into better cures stagnated because it was deemed not cost-effective, and due to the artificially inflated cost of drugs, delivering diagnostic tools and treatments to poorer countries is considered unprofitable. Thus, poorer countries (and sometimes minorities and immigrants within wealthier countries) cannot access newer, safer, and better drugs and must rely on outdated diagnostic tools and medicines that are not as effective, a situation that causes preventable deaths from a disease that, as Green often notes, we already know how to cure. The above not only has a devastating human cost but also allows drug-resistant strains to spread further. Green makes this human cost of TB painfully clear by sharing stories of doctors, health workers, patients, and their families, whose lives and struggles illuminate what statistics cannot...continued
Full Review
(879 words)
(Reviewed by Sofia Chatzistefanou).
One idea that stuck with me from John Green's book Everything Is Tuberculosis was how TB became racialized. And a brief look at history shows the same pattern occurring not just with tuberculosis but with nearly every major outbreak. Which means that pathogens and bacteria weren't and aren't the only things that spread during such epidemics. Pre-existing racial biases, inequalities, and injustices become more apparent and widespread as well. From the plague and typhus to HIV and COVID-19, illnesses have repeatedly exposed and amplified a host of social faults.
Racialization of disease primarily has three different aspects: scapegoating, structural inequality, and medical bias. It can be observed both between different countries (such ...
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What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading, you wish the author that wrote it was a ...
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