Book Cover

How can I accept a world where over a million people will die this year for want of a cure that has existed for nearly a century?

# Review

Green dives into one of history's deadliest illnesses and explores the social and scientific reverberations of tuberculosis which affect still the present day.

I couldn't help but compare this book to Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies because both books focus on one particular illness and explores both the social and scientific facets of said illness throughout history. Unlike Mukherjee's exhaustive encyclopedic retelling of cancer, Green's book is brief and reads much more like a focused advocacy book than a sweeping scientific history. As a result of the focused scope and the more colloquial language, Everything Is Tuberculosis is much more approachable and a much quicker read.

Green focuses much more on the human impact of TB, especially today, where due to societal inequities, despite TB being almost entirely treatable by modern medicine, many TB patients still routinely die. I also enjoyed the historical social commentary through the lens of TB.

# Conclusion

A poignant book about an influential illness.

# Overall rating: 7.9

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