Did you know that the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent, tuberculosis, is also the reason why we have cowboy hats or the state of New Mexico? Did you know that it is one of the world’s oldest diseases, with signs of infection being detected in human fossils? And despite being entirely curable in the present day, that it still takes over a million lives each year? All of this and more you might learn from John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Disease.
Everything is Tuberculosis lives up to its name, careful to outline how so many facets of human existence have had to do with tuberculosis, because it was an incredibly pervasive disease that spread without discriminating between class, race, nationality. Rich or poor, everyone in history could have had TB and while their symptoms and suffering were the same, their experiences with it vastly differed. Green touches on how TB was at one point seen as the artist’s disease, with figures like the Brontes, Keats, Chopin affected, making people believe their works gained a resonant poignancy that was a product of the disease itself. Artists had to feel emotions deeply, they had to suffer, and TB opened them up to feel it all. He similarly touched on how TB defined Victorian beauty standards, as the image of the slender and pale TB patient began to be romanticised. TB itself, romanticised throughout history, is now treated as something distant and irrelevant to people privileged enough to live in countries where curing antibiotics are readily available and catching it, unlikely.
The author, John Green, is not a medic, but he is many things to many people. He might have authored your favourite Young Adult novels (or the novel behind your favourite YA film) and just as likely he might have taught you World History or Literature on his educational YouTube channel shared with his brother, Crash Course. You might have watched his videos on YouTube channel Vlogbrothers (also shared with his brother) going from silly jokes to reflective talks about philosophy, science, or human empathy. You might have enjoyed content from or attended VidCon, an annual convention founded by the two Green brothers celebrating internet culture.
He is many things, but a medical historian might not quite be what you’d think of him as. And yet, Everything is Tuberculosis might be his most John Green book yet.
The facts taught in this book are difficult to forget, as Green explains everything, perhaps relying on his Crash Course background, in a most accessible and engaging way. He covers so much ground but you’re never overwhelmed with information. I will be the first to admit that I have not read many (or read, any) other non-fiction books about diseases, but I find it hard to believe that such accessibility is the standard. I imagine an author who is not actually a medic or scientist, but rather a gifted fiction writer, makes a positive difference in readability.
Indeed, what brought Green to stardom were his fiction novels. With Green you might have spent time at a boarding school in Alabama, searching for meaning with a group of precocious teenagers in Looking for Alaska. You might have gone on an epic journey chasing after an enigmatic young girl who disappeared and left behind a series of clues in Paper Towns, or you might have learned to love life and its promises with chronically ill teenagers in The Fault in Our Stars.
Green’s first non-fiction book was a collection of essays published in 2021, The Anthropocene Reviewed. In this book based on a podcast of his, he rated human phenomena from Halley’s comet to the film Penguins of Madagascar on a five-star scale. The essays are profound, tender, and focused on finding meaning in the mundane. In a beautiful essay titled ‘Googling Strangers’, he movingly reflects on being a student chaplain at a children’s hospital while he was training to be an Episcopal minister. He writes about the heaviness of the role and the way the heartbreak he witnessed challenged his views and beliefs, but also about his amazement with human resilience and hope. Green’s formative experiences as such underlies the compassion and reality with which he handles illness. The Fault in Our Stars was huge because of its romance, but also for the way it treated children with chronic illness as regular people with flaws and hopes and dreams.
While telling the story of tuberculosis itself, Everything is Tuberculosis in parallel follows Henry, a young boy suffering from TB in Sierra Leone who Green became close to. He truly cares for Henry, and you do as a reader as well. At first glance, Everything is Tuberculosis sounds entirely different to Green’s previous body of work and yet, here he is, telling the at once piercing and hopeful of a teenager. This is what Green does best. Green tells Henry’s story because Henry is the catalyst that shows Green the contemporary prevalence of the disease, who turns Green into an activist against TB, who leads Green to pen this text. But, also, he tells the story of Henry to show readers that while it might be hard to conceptualise a disease and its capacity for devastation when one only looks at arbitrary numbers and statistics, thinking of a real person who feels, loves, hopes, and suffers may permit us to closely understand and empathise with how the disease affects real people.
Everything is Tuberculosis is a heartwarming book that combines everything Green has ever been, children’s hospital chaplain, YouTube history teacher, YA novelist, and ties it all together with warmth and kindness. Green made his return to fiction with his latest Hollywood, Ending, released on 22 September 2026. I expect this to be a strong return, as while Green was not writing fiction novels, he was honing his craft as a writer meditating on humanity.