Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection Paperback

Description

• A Personal Human Story: Woven through the historical chapters is the contemporary narrative of Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient whom John Green met in 2019 at the Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with the global health organization Partners In Health. Henry’s journey with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis gives a human face to a global crisis.

• History and Cultural Impact: The book explores how tuberculosis has shaped human history for millennia, touching on how it was once romanticized as a malady of artists and poets in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how it has influenced everything from architecture to societal views on mortality.

• The Injustice of Access: Green examines the systemic barriers that keep life-saving treatments—such as modern drugs and rapid diagnostic testing—out of reach for people in low-income regions, pointing to pharmaceutical profiteering, socioeconomic disparity, and neglected health infrastructure.

• A Call to Action: Rather than offering a purely harrowing look at disease, the book acts as an earnest, highly readable call to advocacy, shedding light on the changemakers and organizations working toward global healthcare reform and the eventual eradication of TB.