Jacob Shymanski

But he could just give you the history, you know, in chronological order and everything we know about it.

But really, the book is about everything.

why John Green is so fascinated by the history of tuberculosis.

And he does that by presenting this story of a tuberculosis patient in Sierra Leone called Henry and the relationship that develops with him while he's there visiting.

And it's this like crossover between the story of Henry and the history of tuberculosis and all the wacky things around it and how tuberculosis has really shaped humanity.

But it all comes back to why it's so fascinating to him.

So it's kind of personal, but it's more than just a factual history book.

You're getting the real story of Henry.

You're getting to learn about John Green and...

The things about tuberculosis that make it so fascinating.

So highly recommend Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green.

And when you get those bits of reflection from the author, where I've seen this sort of thing, where an author might say, well, X thing is this way because of Y. But after some thinking, I started asking questions, this question and that question.

It wasn't all quite adding up.

And so I had to look in a different place.

And I found this and that.

It shows that the author isn't arrogant.

That the author is questioning themselves, that they're actually taking it deeply and not just writing something for their vanity to be this godlike voice in people's ears.

Because I swear to God, that's what it is for some authors sometimes.

I'll add another do to this list.

A good quality for nonfiction to have is to be able to connect the story of individuals to bigger ideas, but also the other way around.