Today's Featured Book:
Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
by John Green
Genre: Nonfiction
Published: March 18, 2025
Page Count: 206 pages
Summary:
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.
When I first visited Lakka Government Hospital a few years back, I did not really want to be there.
THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky.
Even as TB became curable, the cure often did not reach the places that needed it the most.
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John Green has a new book out?
Oh, wow. Wonderful. What's it about?
Tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis? Really? Nah, I’m not interested in reading a book about tuberculosis.
Or so I thought...
Then everyone I knew was reading and ranting about how wonderful Everything is Tuberculosis is.
So I had to read it. Right away. And I’m glad I did. It’s a wonderful book. It is about tuberculosis, but it is also about everything.
What do you know about tuberculosis? Not much? Well, that’s about what I knew before I read this book. I certainly had no idea that 1,300,000 people will die of tuberculosis this year. And, more, I had no idea that if everyone could access good health care, no one would die of tuberculosis.
I urge everyone to read this book. And then tell others about it.
I never expected to love a book about tuberculosis.
A few quotes from the book:
“...tuberculosis is curable, and has been since the mid-1950s. We know how to live in a world without tuberculosis. But we choose not to live in that world.”
“We are powerful enough to light the world at night, to artificially refrigerate food, to leave Earth’s atmosphere and orbit it from outer space. But we cannot save those we love from suffering. This is the story of human history as I understand it—the story of an organism that can do so much, but cannot do what it most wants.”
“It reminded me that when we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity. We can do and be so much for each other. But only when we see one another in our full humanity. Not as statistics or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world.”
The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.
December 12th - Do you keep up with the hype surrounding books? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)
Yes and no. I am not interested in books that Get All the Love. In general. Something on the bestseller's list? Probably not for me. But if you are hyping a book because it's good...bring it on.
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