Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

Tuberculosis (TB) killed more than one million people in 2023 and over a billion in the last 200 years. TB is an airborne infection that spreads in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. Most who are infected remain asymptomatic, but people with impaired immune systems, malnutrition, and chronic diseases such as diabetes risk active disease. Although TB is now preventable and curable, much of society chooses to ignore it. Bestselling and award-winning YA novelist and essayist Green (The Fault in Our Stars; The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet) became interested in TB while visiting Laka Hospital in Sierra Leone, where he befriended a young patient named Henry. His new book looks at the history, science, and sociology of TB. It jumps from scientific explanations of German microbiologist Robert Koch’s work to analysis of the inequities in healthcare and economics that make even inexpensive drugs and basic care unavailable in many parts of the world.