Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green: The Facts Behind the Book

Everything Is Tuberculosis is a nonfiction book by John Green about the history of TB and one young patient. It tells the story of Henry Reider, whom Green met in 2019 at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. Henry's story is woven together with an account of how tuberculosis has shaped science and society¹. The full title is Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection². The publisher describes how the book follows TB from a romanticized disease to one tied to poverty and inequity¹. The author's site says the book argues that the world could choose to live without TB².

The history the book draws on is told in full on its own page. That page traces the history of tuberculosis from consumption to cure.

Henry Reider is the young TB patient at the center of the book, whom John Green met in Sierra Leone in 2019. Through his story the book asks who gets TB treatment and who goes without. Its publisher describes TB as curable and preventable, yet still the deadliest infectious disease, killing over a million people a year¹. The publisher says the friendship between Green and Henry runs through the book¹. Green met Henry on a 2019 Partners In Health trip to Sierra Leone⁹. WHO data from 2025 estimate that 390,000 people developed drug-resistant TB (MDR/RR-TB) in 2024⁴. That same year, 164,545 people were enrolled on treatment for it⁴. How care is organized here is covered under tuberculosis treatment in the US.

John Green writes about tuberculosis because meeting Henry in 2019 turned him into a campaigner for TB treatment. He spoke at the United Nations in 2023, calling for an end to TB within a decade. Green and his wife, Sarah Urist Green, visited Sierra Leone in April 2019 (Wikipedia, John Green). The trip followed a 2017 New Yorker profile of Ophelia Dahl, a co-founder of Partners In Health. His author site links an Atlantic excerpt on projected rises in TB deaths after USAID funding cuts². How the US runs its own programs is explained under tuberculosis control.

John Green has campaigned for cheaper TB medicines and tests, leading public pressure on two companies in 2023. He pressed Johnson and Johnson to allow generic versions of bedaquiline, a medicine for drug-resistant TB. Johnson and Johnson said it had decided to allow generics a month before the public backlash (Wikipedia, John Green). A deal with the Stop TB Partnership followed. Two months after that campaign, Green urged the diagnostics company Cepheid to lower the price of its GeneXpert test cartridges. Wikipedia's article on the book says both companies eased access to the drug and the rapid test⁹. The Sirturo label approves bedaquiline for lung TB resistant to at least rifampin and isoniazid. It covers patients 2 years and older who weigh at least 8 kg. An archived CDC page from 2024 dates the first FDA approval of bedaquiline to 2012. The drug itself is described in the guide to bedaquiline for drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Yes, tuberculosis is the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent worldwide, WHO data from 2026 show. It killed 1.23 million people in 2024, and 10.7 million fell ill. The WHO fact sheet from 2026 calls TB preventable and curable³. WHO estimated in 2026 that about a quarter of the world population has been infected with TB bacteria³. About 5 to 10% of people infected eventually get symptoms and develop TB disease³. Of the deaths in 2024, 150,000 were among people with HIV³. WHO data from 2025 show eight countries had two thirds of all cases in 2024, led by India at 25%⁴. The wider picture is on the page about tuberculosis deaths and mortality rate.

The book covers the long history of tuberculosis, from the era when it was called consumption to modern treatment. In the 1800s TB was called consumption, and in 1882 it killed one in seven Americans and Europeans. Robert Koch announced his discovery of the TB germ on March 24, 1882⁵. That date, March 24, is now marked each year as World TB Day⁵. In the 1700s TB was called the white plague, for the pale skin of its patients⁵. TB accounted for 25% of European deaths across the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s⁵. Streptomycin, isolated by Albert Schatz in Selman Waksman's laboratory, acted against TB germs in the test tube in 1944 (James Lind Library). A British trial of the drug was published in 1948. Used alone, streptomycin could not be relied on, because the bacteria became resistant. Combining it with another drug worked far better (James Lind Library). The older name has its own page: consumption, the old name for tuberculosis.

Yes, tuberculosis is still diagnosed in the United States every year, though it is rare compared with most of the world. Provisional CDC data from 2026 count 10,260 American cases for 2025, or 3.0 for every 100,000 people. In 2024 the US reported 10,388 cases, a rate of 3.1 per 100,000 and a fourth straight yearly rise⁷. The national report from 2025 attributed 572 deaths to TB in 2023⁷. People born outside the US made up 77% of the 2025 cases⁶. The 2025 rate was 0.8 per 100,000 for people born in the US and 15.4 for people born elsewhere⁶. CDC estimated in 2025 that up to 13 million people in the US live with inactive, or latent, TB. Latent TB is not contagious⁸. Untreated, inactive TB turns into active TB disease in 1 in 10 people⁸. Figures from the 2026 release are gathered in tuberculosis cases in the US: latest CDC numbers.

These short answers cover the author, the release, the format and the reception of the book.