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

YA author Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed) takes another turn toward nonfiction in this congenial history of the world’s “oldest contagious disease.” Green writes that he became “obsessed” with tuberculosis after a chance meeting at a Sierra Leone hospital with a charming young patient, Henry Reider, who was sick with drug-resistant TB. Green weaves Henry’s moving story of illness and recovery together with a social history of the disease, explaining that tuberculosis once killed rich and poor indiscriminately, but after the late-19th-century advent of germ theory, it became a “disease of the poor and marginalized.” Green contends that, today, injustice—lack of access to adequate food, housing, and healthcare—is the “root cause” of all tuberculosis, and urges that since “we are the cause... we must also be the cure.” Adhering to form, Green peppers his account with quirky-fun facts (the hatmaker who designed the Stetson, famously worn by cowboys, had moved to the West in search of a dry-air cure for his consumption) and YA-style philosophizing (“The world we share is a product of all the worlds we used to share”; “We live in between what we choose and what is chosen for us”). He also offers personal reflections on how his journey into tuberculosis philanthropy was fueled by his OCD and how the disease reminded him of his YouTuber brother Hank Green’s run-in with cancer. Green’s fans will be pleased by this window into his latest obsession. (Mar.)