John Green Is Obsessed With Tuberculosis. His New Book Explains Why.

EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, by John Green

Tuberculosis kills more people — over a million a year worldwide — than any other infectious disease. It would kill millions more annually were it not for a fragile system devoted to finding and treating the disease in developing countries.

That system, long propped up with the help of funding from the United States, has been jolted by the Trump administration’s recent moves to slash foreign aid. Already, hundreds of thousands of people with tuberculosis worldwide can’t get tests and treatments. The U.S. Agency for International Development, which President Trump has been dismantling, projected worrisome consequences: a 30 percent increase in tuberculosis cases globally, and an influx of patients with drug-resistant cases arriving in the United States.

All of this makes John Green’s new book, “Everything Is Tuberculosis,” incredibly timely. It is, at its core, a plea to readers to care about a disease that doesn’t directly affect them.

Green is best known for young adult novels like “The Fault in Our Stars,” a best-selling tear-jerker about two teenage cancer patients. “Everything Is Tuberculosis” is his second nonfiction book. He’s also a video blogger and, with his brother Hank Green, has built a large and devoted following of altruistic fans who call themselves “Nerdfighters.”

Green seems to have this audience in mind with his expansive, easy-to-read “Everything Is Tuberculosis.” Earnest and empathetic, he tells the disease’s story in a way that can feel at times like his series of educational YouTube videos.

In Green’s telling, he has become obsessed with tuberculosis, seeing it as a window into “the folly and brilliance and cruelty and compassion of humans.” His book’s title is a nod to that. “My wife, Sarah, often jokes that in my mind everything is about tuberculosis, and tuberculosis is about everything,” he writes.