John Green, author of “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Looking for Alaska,” launched a new non-fiction book entitled “Everything is Tuberculosis,” which tells the history of the world’s most infectious disease: tuberculosis. 

Tuberculosis (TB) killed about a million people in 2023 alone, a statistic most people find bewildering, given how far removed TB has been from a majority of the world. As Green puts it, the world sees it as a “disease of poverty.” In this collection of essays, he breaks down everything, from his initial interest in studying TB to its history to how inequality and injustice have quietly shunned the disease from the general public.

Green proved himself to be a great non-fiction writer after the release of “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” and continues his mission to learn more about the world in this book. Not only is his prose engaging and easy to understand, but the depth of his research is clear. While he remains consistent with his writing ability throughout, chapters like “Marco. Polo.” stick out as they paint a more detailed and devastating picture of the disease beyond the public’s common knowledge.

“Chapter 14: Marco. Polo.” follows the complex topic of antibiotic resistance. While the phrase speaks for itself, the essay further breaks down the science behind antibiotic resistance and why TB medication hasn’t successfully bypassed bodies that resist antibiotics. At least from 1966 to 2012, the world stopped trying to figure out this problem. The chapter comes to the chilling realization that TB could be stopped, yet nothing is done about it. Green dives into how the pharmaceutical industry has a low profit motive to develop treatments for TB. While the public often hears about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry, Green’s breakdown of the topic in this chapter is much more eye-opening than the brief quips heard in the news.

Many of the essays and chapters in this book flow in the same way. Green sets the stage with an anecdote or a callback to a previous essay, then ties it to his main point of informing the world about TB and how to completely eradicate it. Each essay builds upon the previous ones, leaving readers informed on a topic they didn’t know they needed to learn about.

John Green’s “Everything is Tuberculosis” is a must-read due to his excellent writing skills and dedication to research on TB. After sitting down and soaking in each of his essays, readers will see how everything is, in fact, tuberculosis. 

5 (The Fault in Our) stars out of 5