Everything Is Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, a bacterial infection also known as TB, consumption, and phthisis, might be viewed from multiple perspectives. Everyone knows the ‘biomedical lens’ with concepts of infection, healthcare, surgery, drugs and clinics. After meeting Henry, a young TB patient, author John Green was inspired to write Everything Is Tuberculosis, a book informed by a range of sources including first-person recounts, public health data, literature, and historical, financial and scientific records. Green takes an engaging, broader view of the topic, incorporating religious, hereditary, historical, cultural and social justice frames of reference. Imagine a bloody cough into a lace handkerchief. So many young, 19th-century Romantics died of the disease, people generally understood that consumption was caused by ‘a personality especially attuned to the fragile and fleeting loveliness of life’. In this spirit, there is an abundance of references and quotes from literature and poetry. There are also many human stories intertwined with medical, social and cultural responses to the disease. The poems and personal stories from young TB patient Henry are insightful and affecting.  With an aim of reducing tuberculosis, Green emphasises realistic concerns: drug resistance, inequities in global healthcare systems, and the significance of poverty. Everything Is Tuberculosis is intelligent and optimistic in reframing disease in more holistic, empathic, human-centred terms. Reviewed by Mark Parry   ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Green is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars, and Turtles All the Way Down. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was the 2006 recipient of the Michael L Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than 55 languages and over 24 million copies are in print. Visit John Green's website