John Green is coming to Drake campus as this year’s Bucksbaum Lecture speaker. (Photo: Bennett Waara)
By Hailey Evans
Associate Editor
Anyone who grew up like me, in what I like to call the golden age of the internet, will know the name John Green. Between 2011 and 2016, his name was ubiquitous in my high school. We obsessed over his novel “The Fault in Our Stars” on Tumblr. We crammed his Crash Course videos on YouTube to study for AP U.S. History tests and to help understand what the hell we’d just read in “The Odyssey.”
That’s why I’m particularly excited about this news: Green plans to deliver Drake University’s 47th annual Bucksbaum Lecture on April 2, at the Knapp Center. In the past, the lecture series has explored a range of topics with renowned personalities including Jane Goodall, Maya Angelou and most recently Misty Copeland. This time, the Drake Times-Delphic reports that the event will likely function more like a book talk, as Green is currently touring his most recent nonfiction release “Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection.”
I’ve aged out of Green’s old YA novels, but I’d say his nonfiction is just as compelling, if not more so. I read “Everything Is Tuberculosis” last month and can best describe it as part ADHD-fueled, Wikipedia deep-dive (which I mean as a compliment) and part biography of drug-resistant TB survivor Henry Reider. I was shocked at just how unironic the title is: So much of our present culture has been shaped by the history of this disease, the cure for which is only as old as some of our grandparents.
One of my favorite “fun” facts from the book is that the Adirondack chair, now synonymous with leisure and relaxation, was actually developed in the early 20th century to accommodate TB patients at sanatoriums in the Adirondack Mountains. The chairs were designed to be comfortable enough for patients to sit in them for hours outdoors, “taking the air,” which was thought to be therapeutic.
Another bit I found amusing was the chapter about the romanticization of the disease throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. You’ve heard of “heroin chic,” but what about “consumptive chic?” It started when society began idealizing the disease’s side effects, like pale skin, flushed cheeks and weight loss — possibly as a response to the trauma of so many deaths.
I’d definitely recommend this book, even, or especially, if you’ve never given TB a second thought in our modern era of COVID and bird flus. It’s thoroughly researched and full of good information but also deeply human in the way Green is known for in his fiction. I’ll absolutely be at the Knapp Center next Thursday, eager to hear him talk about it.
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