Book Review: "Everything is Tuberculosis" by John Green

(Maybe this is a thing I'll keep doing, maybe it isn't. Follow me on Fable if you want more book content because that's probably the lowest bar for me.)

The Deets

• Title: "Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection"
• Author: John Green
• Genre: Non-Fiction
• Published: 2025
• Publisher: Crash Course Books
• Page Count: 208

You can purchase this book at bookshop.org and support your local, independent bookstore. If you prefer the audiobook, checkout libro.fm. Even better, check your local library. Either in person or through Libby. Support small bookstores, support local libraries. Lining the pockets of a billionaire doesn't help anyone.

Brief Summary

From Wikipedia:

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection is a book by American author John Green about tuberculosis, a curable disease usually brought on by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis that is the leading cause of death from an infectious disease. The book argues that the disease is not primarily caused by the bacteria anymore but by human choices. It was published on March 18, 2025 and is Green's second nonfiction book.

My Thoughts

Some Backstory

As a starter, I want to point out the environment I was in when I read this book and my own experience with TB.

My partner and I were on a 10+ hour drive to Denver, CO. As part of my exodus from Audible, I had used my remaining credits to pick up a couple short books from authors I liked to fill the drive. This book was on the list. We made it about 3 hours into the 5 hour book when we had to take a break.

Until reading this book, my only experience even remotely related to TB was an incredibly awkward moment during the onboarding at a job I briefly had at a hospital. The way most places test for TB is to inject something under the skin on your forearm and see if you have a reaction and this is all well and good for most people. I, unlike most people, am tattooed pretty heavily, which does two things:

1. It makes it difficult to check for the reaction.
2. My new employer was unaware that I was so heavily tattooed.

It threw a weird wrench in my time there, but I didn't have TB so I guess that's cool.

The Actual Book

Now that we've set the tone a bit...

Since the release, John Green has become a bit of a meme on the internet because it seems he can literally tie anything to tuberculosis somehow. While that's an interesting party trick, I think it plays down a little what TB is, the impact is has on the world, and how fundamentally it has shaped so much of our current society.

I don't think I'm the one to speak on the social implications of TB or how much it says about the world. The best way to sum it up, which comes from the book:

The cure is where the disease is not. The disease is where the cure is not.

The reasons why that is the case are shocking. This is especially true considering the minimal costs (in the grand scheme of things) to have the cure everywhere the disease is. The barriers are artificial and driven by systemic problems in the global economy.

Sometimes you need a specific lens in which to see things. I feel this book is that lens. It will be shocking and difficult to people that don't spend a lot of time reading "leftist propaganda" on the failings of the world and another lens in which to show how far from the path we have strayed.

I'm writing this review two weeks after reading it and I'm still seeing that TB truly is in everything we do.