Everything Is Tuberculosis

I found this fascinating, partly from personal interest as my grandfather specialized in tuberculosis (and in fact went back to China to help the people there, though I suspect part of that was because back then the profession here wasn't so welcoming to Asian Americans but that's another story...), also because, something I learned from this book, TB is still a thing, a really big thing, so a theme of this book is how that can be compared to how we banged out covid vaccines in record time. It's not a very technical book, more pondering about public policy, reminiscent of Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, which this author cites as a major influence in a very good afterword including other reading, if you want to dig deeper, and we probably should.

It's probably a bit morbid that I listened to this in audiobook format while trying to deal with my third COVID infection, but music is too overstimulating to listen to at the moment and I needed something to calm my nerves.

It's always a pleasure to listen to John Green speak and this book was no exception. That being said, if you follow his social media very closely and watch all of his videos, you probably have already heard basically all of the information presented in this book. So in that sense, if you're looking for something new, you probably won't find it here.

Nonetheless, I had a really good time listening to this audiobook and I would definitely recommend it to anybody who wants to learn more about tuberculosis and how it shapes our world.

Anyone who listened to John Green at all in the past years knows a bit about tuberculosis. Because since he realised that it is everywhere in human history and present, he cannot shut up about it. Now he has beautifully summarised this story in this book. Many of us don't know that tuberculosis is not only currently the deadliest disease on our planet, but italso has been for basically all of human history. We (living in 1st world countries) have just forgotten about it because it stopped being a threat to us ca. 60 to 70 years ago, while poor people keep dying all over the world. John Green managed to make this book a historical as well as medical introduction to the disease, the story of a boy names Henry from Sierra Leone, and a story of inequity and poverty, but also hope and the power of human kindness.