Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, by bestselling novelist John Green, inadvertently arrives at an apt moment in United States history. As we witness elimination of USAID funding and the country’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), we are beginning to witness the global and national health consequences. This book offers insights—based not on conjecture, but rooted in the history of the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

John Green is the author of books including *Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down*, and *The Anthropocene Reviewed*. Green serves on the Board of Trustees for global health nonprofit Partners in Health and, in partnership with PiH and the Nerdfighter community around Vlogbrothers video, has raised over $30 million dollars to tackle maternal mortality in Sierra Leone. In 2023, he spoke at the United Nations calling for the eradication of tuberculosis cases in the next decade. Green lives with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana. Read more at johngreenbooks.com and learn about the fight against tuberculosis at tbfighters.org .
*Photo by Marina Waters*

Those who know Green for his young adult fiction, including the best-seller The Fault in Our Stars, may find him an unlikely author of a book focusing on tuberculosis. But in recent years, Green has become an advocate for global health philanthropy, a shift that influenced his creative pursuits, beginning with his first non-fiction work, The Anthropocene Reviewed, followed by Everything is Tuberculosis.

Green’s interest in tuberculosis (TB) emerged following a visit to Sierra Leone where he briefly stopped at a TB hospital. There, he met Henry, a charismatic boy who guided him through the facility and Green initially assumed the child was the son of a staff member. The boy reminded him of his own son, also named Henry; only later, did Green discover that Henry was a TB patient who would likely not survive. This encounter ignited Green’s deep interest in the disease through a humanitarian lens.

The book begins with a sweeping historical overview of TB, highlighting not only the scope of its destruction, but also the universality of its reach. Green draws from literature across cultures that describe TB as a “consumptive” illness that leads the body to waste away. He explores how TB has shaped culture, including its romanticization in past centuries when it was believed to inspire heightened creativity in artists, allowing them to deeply connect with their spirit as their bodies shrank away.

Green also reveals how culture has shaped the treatment of TB, most notably through countless economic and racial inequities. He ultimately argues that the persistence of TB in the 21st century is not merely the result of bacterial survival, but of compounding human choices—particularly in how resources are distributed among high- and low-income countries. Green is openly critical of pharmaceutical monopolies, such as Johnson & Johnson, for maintaining control over TB antibiotic patents that limit access to life-saving medications.

Access disparities have led to incomplete treatments and the rise of drug-resistant TB strains, perpetuating the need for new antibiotics—drugs that again remain inaccessible to many. It is society’s complacency with this cycle, Green argues, that allows the disease to persist.

But Green fairly argues that it’s not just pharmaceutical inequities. Multiple systems must be in place for every country to have adequate access to antibiotics: reliable transportation for both medications and patients, clinics with safe water and electricity, consistent access to food to prevent GI side effects, and education systems strong enough to train clinic staff, nurses and doctors.

Woven into his historical and sociopolitical commentary is Henry’s contemporary story. By foregrounding a modern-day patient, Green effectively reminds the audience that TB remains relevant, a notion that can be forgotten in high-income countries. Through Henry’s experiences, readers find connection—despite global disparities—through shared themes of family complexity, fear of death and enduring hope. As Henry’s story unfolds, Green educates readers about the unique microbiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, public health interventions and the challenges posed by multi-drug-resistant TB. He does so in an accessible, non-technical style, acknowledging that his goal is advocacy rather than expertise.

Though some factoids are tangential, the book’s pacing is engaging. It is refreshing that the writer has no background in either medicine or public health. Green incorporates expert citations along with his personal reflections, at times shifting into the first person and lending the book a kind of journalistic intimacy. His candid discussions of mental health issues mirror his exploration of TB, reinforcing his thesis that illness is not purely biomedical, but also socially constructed—its meaning shaped by culture and stigma. Notably, one of his lines about stigma reminds the reader that TB is relevant: “Stigma is a way of saying, “You deserved to have this happen,” but implied within the stigma is also, “And I don’t deserve it, so I don’t need to worry about it happening to me.”

Admittedly, when I started this book, my reference for TB was a single patient with active disease for whom I have cared and a knowledge that only certain US demographic groups carry much risk of contracting TB. Reading Green’s book was humbling, and reminded me that my narrow view is, in fact, a luxury afforded by global inequities, racism, and profit motives—a point he hammers home.

Green also highlights effective TB initiatives that offer real solutions to patients like Henry.

For clinicians and lay readers alike, Everything is Tuberculosis is an urgent reminder of the challenges and failures in global health. While it celebrates the power of global collaboration, it also underscores that the primary barrier to TB eradication is not biomedical advances, but how society has selected to inequitably distribute resources.

Green leaves readers with a stark scaffolding upon which to envision TB’s trajectory in the absence of USAID funding and WHO involvement. As we witness the erosion of global health infrastructure support, we are left to question how much worse must the TB landscape become before we intentionally change our cultural and political response?—Grace Judd