Everything Is Tuberculosis

I thought this would be a book about science - how TB works etc. Instead it's mostly about one boy's story with TB, interspersed with commentary about how bad it is that treatments aren't available in poor countries. There's very little science in the book, and certainly not enough to maintain my interest (I finished the book but only because it was very short and had large print).

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.

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.