Where John Green Schools Us by Breaking Our Hearts

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

John Green does an amazing job with this topic. 5 stars.

The notion I thought was central to the book--how tuberculosis has affected society throughout history, in strange and unexpected ways--is present here, and interesting, and tragic, but the book really is about how systems work and the failure of the wealthy part of the world to solve a problem with pretty clearly-established solutions. It's not a college essay or bloodless recitation of facts. It's more like a jeremiad, a loud cry from a prophet trying to awaken the sleeping nations that could end this plague, showing where and how and why we should take action to save the million and a quarter people who die from this disease every year.

(He's humble. He keeps calling his celebrity a "megaphone" that he lucked into, and expresses his desire to use that megaphone well, drawing our attention to needs awaiting society's intervention, trying not to speak over other voices that are more deserving or informed or urgent than his own. That's okay. He can be humble--it suits. I'll still call this book prophetic in the most positive sense.)

Of course he does a good job giving us the numbers and explaining the standard therapies and costs and various acronyms pertinent to the discussion--but more significantly, he humanizes the disease with the true stories of sufferers, including those he personally knows or was related to. As he says, more than 100,000 people die each month of the disease, but that's hard to comprehend. "I've been in a stadium with a hundred thousand people," he writes, "but I didn't know each of their families. I didn't know about the people they've loved, the heartbreaks they've endured, their constraints and encouragements... But I can, just barely, fathom Henry."

Henry's story, woven through the book, illustrates much of what happens to TB sufferers in poorer countries, how they can do everything in their power and still fail, often still die, and might only survive through the actions of others (like you and me). Henry--with some others--puts a face on the illness. He personifies the resilience of many fighting the disease as well as the cruelty of our indifference--when little effort from us, from our government, from our thought leaders, could end the worst of the misery.

For me, looking as he does like any number of students I've taught over the years, Henry represents all the hope I felt when facing likely young people trying to make a future for themselves and the grief I felt when some of them were too weighed down by personal or systemic difficulties to finish their schooling. As important as education is, though, TB is literally life and death. How much more does it motivate and mobilize us to make these connections?

Sure, we should do everything we can for others without knowing their stories; that's what saints do. But most of us aren't saints. John Green recognizes that it's personal connection that puts most of us into motion, and this book creates that connection. I don't know if I am invested enough in TB, overall, to take much action. But I want to save Henry, and I want to lift the weight his mother has been carrying, and I want to see them live normal, happy lives.

That's what this book supplies, the human context necessary for us to feel what's happening. And that's why it's important to read and share it.

It's a quick, engaging read, worth a look for that reason alone. Additionally, it's an important book. Highly recommended.

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