Everything Is Tuberculosis

Author John Green
Narrator John Green
Publisher Ebury Publishing
Publish Date 20 March 2025
Run Time 5 hours and 36 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Health, illness and addiction: social aspects, History of science, History: plagues, diseases etc, Popular medicine and health: the human body, Popular science, Social and cultural history.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. 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 and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 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.

© John Green 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critics Review

Earnest and empathetic

New York Times

Everything Is Tuberculosis doesn't so much tell you the story of tuberculosis, as much as it gently holds your hand and parts the curtains into one of the darkest, most bizarre, and frustrating series of decisions in world history with the other... A quintessential John Green book: one that grapples with the issue of mortality and our conflicting desires to both help and hurt one another, all within the backdrop of the coming of age of a young man

Slate

Green uses the stories of real people to turn overwhelming problems into something personal and understandable.

The Associated Press

This highly readable call to action could not be more timely

Kirkus, starred review

Henry's story is hopeful and heartbreaking; readers will be rooting for him and his family the whole way through

SLJ, starred review

Green writes expertly of the illness's history, causes (malnutrition, poverty, bad sanitation, etc.), and cure... Insightful and extremely well and clearly written, Everything Is Tuberculosis makes what might be inaccessible accessible

Booklist, starred review

In these challenging times, the global health community is fortunate to count on Green and his inspiring advocacy

Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD, The Lancet

A story of hope and tragedy that feels terribly relevant at a time when the global healthcare system is coming under attack.

The AV Club

An exceptional combination of memoir, medical history and cultural analysis.... Memorably probes the intersections of medicine and human emotion

BookPage, starred review

User Reviews

Book 5.0

Narration 4.8

5.0

4.0

abzlaw 09/07/2025

5.0

closetpirate 30/04/2025

5.0

judithkfrerichs 23/04/2025

5.0

lialexia 20/04/2025

5.0

A ridiculously interesting book about medicine, social (in)justice, capitalism and human connection, love, grief and hope. Filled with interesting facts that help to move the narrative forward. Couldn't stop listening!

seltzer 04/04/2025

5.0

Polo.

An essential book that does not shy away from the gruesome realities of disease and injustice, and yet is filled with hope.

ReyEames 22/03/2025

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