'Everything is Tuberculosis' by John Green

This is a short book review for 'Everything is Tuberculosis' by John Green. Here are some (non-affiliate) links: UK and US.

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I have looked to John Green, for a long time, as a role model for how to make sense of the world when the information one gets from one's own brain isn't particularly friendly – or perhaps not very true. He manages a difficult position of responding to crisis (or what one can rightfully call crisis, (is there a difference?)) without nihilism, denial, or callousness.

This book is short, and examines how tuberculosis, arguably the world's most deadly and curable infectious disease reveals a lot about inequity of access to healthcare by place, class, and race. About how we, humanity, knowingly create more human suffering, now and in the future, because of the unfair systems we created or which emerged from our actions - again, is there a difference?

By looking at tuberculosis – which will kill 1.25 million people this year, is detectable and treatable, and can be made less damaging to human life by limiting the spread – we have to grapple with the question "why are we choosing to do this?"

This is a short book. The title is apt: everything around us comes from the history that made it, tuberculosis is such a part of the human story, so everything is tuberculosis. Cowboy hats, George Orwell's death, Western women's beauty standards? Tuberculosis.

I recommend this book as I recommend Atul Gawande's 'Being Mortal', which forcibly reminds you every few pages that no, really, you will die, and it may well look like the story I am telling you. Greens' book makes us look at something that we seem pathologically unable to keep our attention on: the suffering of others, and the inequitable access to a cure.

Perhaps I will one day write my non-fiction book titled 'Everything is Death' where I'll lay out how sensible and silly yet damaging it is to distance ourselves from mortality.

I want to close this review with a quote from the last paragraph in the book, one that I read over and over because it felt so perfect:

Consider yourself for a moment–everything you've overcome, everything you've survived. Think of the people who loved you up into your now. Think of how hard school is or was, how you were lucky or blessed to meet people you could love and who could love you. Think about how rare and precious humans are, and how many of them you get to worry for and care about. Then, if you can, find a way to multiple that times 1,250,000