Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green

This is a medical based memoir focused on the history of tuberculosis and the author's personal experiences with people who are infected with it. On the one hand this seems wildly different from his enormously popular YA books, which are fiction and then again, I think, they contain characters who struggle with substance use, mental health issues, cancer, and death, so maybe not that different at all. He is a talented story teller, and the short but accurate reflection on tuberculosis past and present, as well as the challenges that are faced in addressing the illness are well and accurately described, as are the health discrepancies across the globe. This is a guy who can make you cry for a good reason--I cried through much of the second half of The Fault In Our Stars, it so accurately captured my fears as a parent of a childhood cancer survivor. He gets it and he can write about it, and this book grabs you in a similar way. He makes a case for science, which is not currently popular nor funded, but hopefully that tide will turn and we will once again embrace fact based solutions to difficult problems. In the meantime, this book will help inform your thinking.