Crash Course Books
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
Published in March 2025
I read Everything Is Tuberculosis at the same time that RFK Jr. was firing CDC director Susan Monarez. This was surreal, upsetting and entirely representative of current times.
John Green’s quick/smart/enjoyable read on the history, science and political economy of TB was completed before the Trump administration’s destruction of USAID and the attempted dismemberment of our public health infrastructure. Had the book been written today, it might have stressed more the role that U.S. institutions play in combating global infectious diseases and the risks to global public health when those organizations are dismantled.
At its heart, Everything Is Tuberculosis is a book less about science and more about values. TB, an infectious disease that is curable if diagnosed early and treated aggressively, still infects 11 million people worldwide and kills 1.25 million annually. Throughout human history, TB has resulted in more deaths (over a billion) than malaria, the plague and smallpox.
While there has been a recent worrying rise in TB rates in the U.S., fewer than 10,000 cases are reported in this country each year, with available treatments highly successful in preventing fatalities. The burden of TB disease and death is borne almost exclusively by the world’s poor. Accurate diagnostic tests and the drugs proven effective in treating TB remain prohibitively expensive for low-income nations. As Green writes, “The cure is where the disease is not and the disease is where the cure is not.”
As everything for me is online learning, my head kept going to the idea that Everything Is Tuberculosis would make a splendid online course.
Green cites several books and articles that he drew upon in telling the (fascinating) story of TB—the disease really is everywhere once you start to look—and in synthesizing the science behind the disease and its treatment.
I kept waiting for Green to highlight the fantastic, low-cost online courses available to global learners on subjects such as infectious diseases and international public health. Some examples include Epidemics: The Dynamics of Infectious Diseases (Penn State), Essentials of Global Health (Yale) and Reflections From 40 Years Fighting International Epidemics (Dartmouth).
Checking out the Green brothers’ (John and Hank) YouTube channel (3.96 million subscribers), there is everything we’d need in terms of video to build a full noncredit online certificate around Everything Is Tuberculosis.
What was the last book that you read that would work perfectly as an online course?
What are you reading?
