Author: John Green
# of Pages: 189 (hardback)
Genre: Non-fiction, History
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: 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.
Review:
"It reminded me that when we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity. We can do and be so much for each other — but only when we see one another in our full humanity, not as statistics or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world"
Yes, I read this book because it's by John Green. I didn't know much about the history nor the current prevalence/treatment efficacy of tuberculosis before reading this book, nor did I have a particular interest.
I was honestly prepared for a book similar to the only other nonfiction book I've read of John Green's: This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl, in which Green highlights the muse of TFIOS who was (non-coincidentally) part of nerdfighteria (John and Hank's vlogbrothers fanclub). Since highlighting this particular teen's story was directly related to her already being a fan of John Green, it didn't surprise me that John also (dare I say narcissistically) included at least one mention of his books and highlighted a TB patient who was in fact a huge fan TFIOS.
That being said, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Henry, the tuberculosis patient who's story is interweaved with the history of tuberculosis, was not focused on for a similar reason but rather for the joy and positivity he brought others in the face of having drug-resistant TB. Our non-fiction "protagonist" (if there is to be one for this book) is an important case in the country Sierra Leone's progress in treating TB.
John Green's voice is so clear in this book as he skips around between highlighting how our understanding on what causes TB has evolved, how it can be treated, why it's still a problem today, and stories of TB patients throughout history. It felt like I was reading a long-format vlogbrothers video; John Green did a great job at making the material digestible and interesting.
Readers actually can relate with John Green's perspective, who writes with the understanding that hearing statistics alone can make it difficult to truly understand why TB is still a modern day problem. He approaches the problem by showing multiple reasons why people in richer countries SHOULD care about this: compassion for other human beings (if everyone had access to good health care, no one should die of TB), fear an evolution of an untreatable TB (countries without adequate treatment and preventative methods perpetuate the spread of drug resistant forms of TB that can eventually lead to a GLOBAL issue), etc.
A relatively short read; I would recommend reading this book if you're a fan of John Green's writing style, even if you aren't particularly interested in learning more about TB.
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