Audiobook Review: Nonfiction Challenge #11

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

Read by John Green

Published: March 2025

Summary from Goodreads:

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

In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. 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 advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, preventable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a 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.

Confession:

This book was amazing and I learned so much from it. The audiobook was also well done and I loved that the author was the one reading it. His emotional attachment to the subject is obvious and it made the impact of this book that much greater. Even those of you who don’t usually read nonfiction, really should think about picking this one up. It is very accessible and reads more like a personal memoir at times. It is a story of heartbreak and hope and at times it will make you angry at the injustices of the world.

I was telling my son about this book and he was amazed that there wasn’t an easy cure or a vaccine for this disease. Like many people today, we just don’t think about it as being a disease that still kills over a million people world wide. This disease is a slow killer as well, sometimes taking years. There is a cure, but it is a difficult journey and most countries just can’t afford it or have the resources to diagnose it early enough. It is rather heartbreaking.

The inclusion of the author’s friend Henry, who was diagnosed at an early age but wasn’t cured until young adulthood, really adds a human element to the story. Henry’s journey is a hard one, but it really emphasized what it is like to live with this disease. It also brings to the forefront all of the issues that still surround this disease today, including racism, capitalism and the many different perceptions about this disease. It think including Henry’s story is what makes this nonfiction book so accessible to everyone.

Everyone should read this book. It is full of heartbreak yet there is a lot of hope built into it as well. I also highly recommend the audiobook. The author’s investment in this story is palpable throughout the narration and I think that makes for a bigger impact.