Everything Is Tuberculosis

technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green

TB is among us

No rating

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.

73pctGeek reviewed Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green

An interesting and important book

4 stars

John Green weaves the story of Henry Reider into the tale of how tuberculosis has shaped and been shaped by history.

Green is a fine fiction writer, and the clear and factual way in which he makes his case in “Everything Is Tuberculosis” shows he has a deft hand with non-fiction too. Even when turning the emotional screws, he steers clear of sentimentality. It is an interesting read, though I learnt somewhat less than expected due to my pre-existing interest in tuberculosis.

Even presuming the numbers and facts laid before the reader are wildly exaggerated, I see no real argument against Green’s plea. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with it. We should be doing all we can to cure tuberculosis.

I’ll even go a step further. I truly believe we should be doing all we can to cure disease and alleviate suffering where we can. Fuck cost-effectiveness. We are people, …

John Green weaves the story of Henry Reider into the tale of how tuberculosis has shaped and been shaped by history.

Green is a fine fiction writer, and the clear and factual way in which he makes his case in “Everything Is Tuberculosis” shows he has a deft hand with non-fiction too. Even when turning the emotional screws, he steers clear of sentimentality. It is an interesting read, though I learnt somewhat less than expected due to my pre-existing interest in tuberculosis.

Even presuming the numbers and facts laid before the reader are wildly exaggerated, I see no real argument against Green’s plea. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with it. We should be doing all we can to cure tuberculosis.

I’ll even go a step further. I truly believe we should be doing all we can to cure disease and alleviate suffering where we can. Fuck cost-effectiveness. We are people, and Green is right about us being here to love and be loved. Our human existence should be enough. It is enough.

4thace@books.theunseen.city reviewed Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green

A man obsessed with TB makes a case for how we should change how we think of it

5 stars

This non-fiction book is by an author known better for his fiction and social media presence. He grew fascinated by the biggest killer disease around the world and researched how something so deadly today could have a treatment that is able to treat it successfully for the last half century. The book began when he met a young tuberculosis patient in Sierra Leone with a magnetic personality who suffered a series of challenges in his illness that each threatened to cost him his life. Along the way, the book delves into the history of researchers who worked on a cure including the big pharmaceutical firms which control the production and distribution of the drugs in the treatment. It explains the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in simple terms for non-experts.

I listened to this as an audiobook, read by the author. He has a talent for making a subject you had …

This non-fiction book is by an author known better for his fiction and social media presence. He grew fascinated by the biggest killer disease around the world and researched how something so deadly today could have a treatment that is able to treat it successfully for the last half century. The book began when he met a young tuberculosis patient in Sierra Leone with a magnetic personality who suffered a series of challenges in his illness that each threatened to cost him his life. Along the way, the book delves into the history of researchers who worked on a cure including the big pharmaceutical firms which control the production and distribution of the drugs in the treatment. It explains the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in simple terms for non-experts.

I listened to this as an audiobook, read by the author. He has a talent for making a subject you had some preconceptions about new and interesting, and one that you would expect to be grim and depressing into something that says something illuminating about the human condition. I hope that the book advances the conversation on what society ought to be doing to safeguard the well-being of humanity as a whole.

Amber Herbert

rated it

July 9