How Infrastructure Works

by Deb Chachra

New

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Technology, Economics, History, Audiobook, Urban Planning

Paperback

Reviews

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am massively disappointed. It sometimes happens when you jump on a very fresh book no-one has reviewed yet, just because the topic looks so interesting - and damn: the promise "how infrastructure works" was a bag of cookies for me. But here's what I've got:

1. There's very little on actual infrastructure, just some very basic theory; we don't get details on: what's global VS what's decentralized, what are unobvious infrastructure services (e.g., Internet), what are critical elements of particular infra & standard ways to mitigate risks related to them. The author doesn't cover: infra service tiering, infra economic common practices (e.g., when budgeting), mechanisms to prevent infra exploiting (tragedy of the commons), etc.

2. Instead the author focus on ... privilege, inequality, unjust (when it comes to diff. aspects of infrastructure). OK, it wouldn't be that bad is she brought some reasonable data or proposed some interesting solutions. But all we get here is inconclusive, incoherent chaos. "Highways are for privileged", "Cars exclude some people: for instance elderly or children", "Newton could sit under the tree & invent his theories because there was someone else (women) making food for him & doing his laundry - how many brilliant (female) minds were wasted because of that". My jaw was literally dropping as she was bringing complaints, but it felt like complaining for complaining. E.g. she claims that there were so many women force (by social norms) to play subservient roles, but due to the development of infra now the society is more equal & such activities are not a burden anymore. OK - so what then? Is there something to be done? At least some lesson learned?

3. The final part of the book is very repetitive & uninspired advocating for sustainability & replacing fossil-based energy sources with the renewable ones. It's mostly right (but the author is very consistent in not providing any data, all she has is just opinions - which in this case same compatible with actual scientific evidence), but: it has very little in common with infrastructure, it's not something one has to convince people to - "obvious obviosities".

What did I like about this book? Very little - some good mental models on what infrastructure is (how to tell something is infra) & what makes it specific. Also: on intended/unintended effects of having access to infrastructure. These were not new (they come for economics courses), but they are definitely useful. Unfortunately, that's all. The rest of the book was a rest of time & money: "You have to build resilient infrastructures!" (w/o going deep in different aspects of resilience - and there's SO MUCH material for that: just take the recent Russian aggression on Ukraine!).

I can't help being massively disappointed.

[Chris Harvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ed Yong calls this book a masterpiece but he's way off. This book isn't a masterpiece, it's terrible! Yong is the author of An Immense World, an actual masterpiece, and the difference between the books is obvious. Yong's book is an onslaught of interesting facts. It varies from chapter to chapter. I learned so many things from that book. This book however has only about a dozen ideas in total, and boy you'll know them by the end. Chachra has stretched what could have been a 30 page essay into a 300 page book, and it's one of the more tedious and frustrating reads I've ever made it through.

The first chapter or two were fine. They set the tone of the book and laid what I thought would be the groundwork to build on. No. What you get in the first couple chapters is all you'll get. The repetition takes it from there. I read the ebook but if I'd had a physical copy I would have taken out my red pen and crossed out every sentence I'd already read from the second half of the book. Entire chapters are just regurgitated versions of earlier chapters.

Who is this book for anyway? The concepts in this book are for someone who has NO idea of infrastructure and how it works even on the basic "water flows down" level. Which is fine, we all start somewhere. But there's no real educating in this book either! Who is gonna be surprised that gas engines contribute to climate change and that we will need to figure out a new system? Chachra doesn't spend much time explaining how new systems might work, only that they're out there. Yes, solar is an idea for the future, thanks. But how? When? What can we do? No answers there.

There was one chapter I enjoyed, where she describes the Dinorwig Power Station in Wales. She does have a nice way of bringing certain parts of the book to a personal level. She doesn't just describe the station, she describes her trip there to see it. I liked that. I wish there had been more examples of great engineering around the world, but that example is pretty much it! Don't worry though, she'll return to it dozens of times throughout the book.

The only thing saving this book from a one star review is that I did finish it. Despite the agrivating repetition it never did lose me. Chachra writes in an accessible way that could be read by anyone. Why they'd want to is a mystery to me though. I've read plenty of books on urbanism concepts and they were all better than this one. Pick any other book.

[CatReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deb Chachra is an engineering professor at Olin College who specializes in biological materials and infrastructure. In her 2023 book How Infrastructure Works, she sets out to explore the systems - often invisible to those in wealthy countries - that keep our lives running: power grids, water supplies, waste management, transportation networks, and more.

Chachra opens from a personal perspective. Growing up between Canada and India gave her an early appreciation for the kinds of infrastructure many in the West take for granted: 24/7 access to potable water, electricity, climate-controlled indoor spaces, generally well-maintained roads, etc. Her point is simple but powerful: these are human-made systems, not natural conditions, and they exist only because of sustained investment and upkeep.

From there, the book examines how much of the infrastructure we rely on today was built in the early-to-mid 20th century. It was designed for a finite lifespan, yet is still in use decades later, but often without adequate maintenance. Chachra makes the case that deferred upkeep is a false economy: repair costs multiply when problems are left to fester. She also identifies three primary threats to infrastructure resilience:

- Cybersecurity vulnerabilities, which could allow bad actors to disrupt essential systems
- Climate change, which is already stressing infrastructure beyond its original design parameters
- Neglect, due to budget cuts or political short-termism

Some of her examples resonate strongly. The Texas “deep freeze” of 2021, which left millions without heat or water, illustrates the high stakes when systems fail. I was reminded of my college years in the mid/late '00s in Houston, where I was fasciated by hurricanes and took an elective course in around 2007 where we learned about the the 1900 Galveston hurricane (which Erik Larson wrote about in Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History) and the inadequate seawall built to prevent a repeat disaster, only for 2008's Hurricane Ike to overwhelm those defenses. The point is clear: preventive investment in infrastructure, from forecasting technology to physical protections, pays dividends in lives and property saved. It's almost always cheaper to invest in preventative maintenance, minor repairs, and upgrades before they're absolutely needed than to wait for a catastrophic failure and then rebuild from scratch.

There’s much here that should be compelling. Unfortunately, the book’s execution didn’t land for me. The prose is often repetitive and meandering. At 320 pages (or 11 audiobook hours), it felt significantly longer, and I struggled to stay engaged despite my own genuine interest in the topic. Hence my rating - not because the topic isn’t important, but because the delivery lacks the sharpness and focus needed to inspire readers to care as much as the author clearly does.

For readers who want a deeper, more engaging exploration of infrastructure and its challenges, I'll link some related books below.

Further reading:
The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity by Amy Webb - a speculative look at cyber-vulnerability concerns
Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future by Oliver Franklin-Wallis - on the hidden systems managing our waste
Cloud Warriors: Deadly Storms, Climate Chaos―and the Pioneers Creating a Revolution in Weather Forecasting by Thomas Weber - about the science and infrastructure behind forecasting
Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George - another eye-opening (and pre-COVID) look at infrastructure on a grand scale, featuring real-life pirates
How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain by Peter Goodman - a post-COVID look at supply chains and their fragility

My statistics:
Book 247 for 2025
Book 2173 cumulatively

[Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a bit of a strange book! It is focuses on a topic that is, on its own terms, mostly "boring" and defined by going unnoticed. And yet the book is filled with infectious wonder and enthusiasm, and finds a through-line connecting the many different networks we interact with every day in ways we are mostly freed from thinking about.

One neat trick here is that the book acknowledges early on that the systems it discusses extend past any individual's understanding, but—like a physicist can discuss the cosmos without being able to name every star—we can reason broadly about why infrastructure networks work, and where their limits are, and how we can think about extending them.

I was pleasantly surprised by the optimism throughout the final third or so of the book. It seems both well-grounded, rigorously justified, and a worthwhile complement to the excitement that preceded it. Lots to consider as I arrange to take tours of my local charismatic megastructures.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We’re accustomed to thinking about making the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable sources as one that we are doing under duress, making a sacrifice to stave off disaster. But that’s not what we’re doing. What we’re doing is leveling up. We—you, me, anyone who is alive today—we have the opportunity to not just live through but contribute to a species-wide transition from struggle to security, from scarcity to abundance.”

Don't be turned off by the low GR rating!

An incredibly hopeful book that looks at the climate crisis not as the death of humanity, but as a challenge—a way we can restructure ourselves as humans. We have all the tools we need, but we need to change the way we think, and we need to do it now. And capitalism and optimization processes are antiethical to everything we need to do that.

I just adored the way Chachra approached the topic of infrastructure, revealing overlooked and assumed layers of interconnectivity and complexity with a continuous sense of wonder and appreciation for the systems humans have built, while acknowledging the vast disparities in health and wealth these systems created and reinforced.

Anywho, I think it was a good primer on how complex and robust a topic of infrastructure is (basically everything that helps you conduct your day in an unseen way), and how vulnerable these various systems are to unstable climates.

“But it’s still really clear to me that many of Rand’s ideas are prevalent in culture, especially American culture, and especially in engineering and technology: they prioritize making things over caregiving and maintenance, the new and novel over what’s sustained, ideas and artifacts that can deliver a profit over activities that need an ongoing commitment of money and other resources, and individualism over acting collectively.”

Curious why, after reading this book and really enjoying it, the rating was so low, I perused the top GR reviews. Surprise, surprise, most of the higher reviews are written by dudes with Opinions, and most of the opinions are that this book is not a detailed account on how every piece of infrastructure works in ass-bleeding detail, but rather a vast overview of interconnectivity and the future, with bits and pieces of individual places and tidbits of history. I saw one review that was basically "there are not enough facts but mostly opinions" and...there are lots of facts in this book? Also, some other reviews said this was "woke," and...it's literally just stating facts. So I dunno what they're on.

Of course, me mentioning this is probably going to invite criticism from people who know more than me, and those comments will be deleted because I'm not in the mood for debating.

“Economic growth cannot sensibly be treated as an end in itself. Development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy. Expanding the freedoms that we have reason to value not only makes our lives richer and more unfettered, but also allows us to be fuller social persons, exercising our own volitions and interacting with—and influencing—the world in which we live.”

Unfortunately, the current US administration is dismantling American infrastructure without regard to the various complex systems being eroded and outright destroyed.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe this is a good book, but the title is a misnomer and will likely result in many people giving the book a low rating for not living up to it. Indeed, I picked it up because I thought it was going to explain how things worked. But this book is not an explanation of engineering. Instead, it is a treatise on the current state of decline of modern infrastructure, the insufficient capacity of modern infrastructures to deal with the extremes of climate change, the consequences of profit-driven infrastructure enterprises (i.e. negative externalities for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the persecuted), and the emergence of new technologies and opportunities they provide to rethink and rebuild our infrastructure such that everyone in the world has access to clean water, energy, transportation, and communication networks. In the final chapters she lays out steps we should take to achieve that future, including practical/technical step (e.g. decarbonizing heating & cooling) and socio-political steps (e.g. de-privatizing infrastructure)

Here are a few of my favorite insights:

-"Infrastructure is Culture." We build it and it then shapes our lives and our descendants lives as strongly as any social customs or taboos.
- "Infrastructure is Agency." Clean water on tap and reliable energy free people (especially women) in privileged countries from the daily burdens of those in non-privileged countries. The same applies to homesteaders. They think by being independent they are free, but in fact they have burdened themselves with with the provision of basic needs. Without common infrastructure shared by all, homesteaders are actually less free.
- "Energy is limitless, Stuff is Not." Humans have treated matter as infinite and energy as scarce. But in fact, the opposite is true. The materials we have available on earth are finite. We should not be wasting them in single-use products. Meanwhile, the sun provides way more energy to the planet than we could possibly use. We just need to harness it. We already have the capability to do that.

[Debbie Notkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book begins with Chachra talking about "charismatic megastructures," a phrase she takes from zoologists' term "charismatic megafauna" (like elephants and whales). The megastructures are great buildings, bridges, etc. It struck me from the beginning that this book is a "charismatic meganarrative" about infrastructure of many kinds, from many perspectives.

If you love nerds, and you especially love to watch them nerding out, you will find this book completely irresistible. If you don't have a nerd fascination, I think this is still a great read, because of her breadth of both knowledge and thought about the role of infrastructure in modern life. Chachra loves infrastructure: she's a materials science professor who travels her neighborhood in search of places where power stations used to be, who tours any water, transit, or electrical facility she can find. Having spent some summers and other times in India gives her some perspective on Western infrastructure assumptions.

She starts by framing what she thinks infrastructure is, and then examines how various infrastructures came about, how they relate to each other, who benefits from them (and thus who doesn't), and much more. She is easily delighted, yet clear-eyed and passionate about the path to a just infrastructure (including an infrastructure that is respectful of the climate and ecology of the planet). She is awed by the human ability to create and solve, and yet very mindful of the human ability to get in our own way.

The book is scientific without being academic--no footnotes, but references in the back for those who want more. She brings her own individual life and choices in frequently, always to make some kind of a point about privilege or lack of options, her own and others. She provides six principles for how to think about the future of infrastructure--I found them very reminiscent of Kate Raworth's principles for Doughnut Economics.

If anything about this review interests you, check the book out, because it will interest you more.

[Nick Edkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very high peaks here, especially the sections on Dinorwig and Hoover, which evoke a sense of grandeur.

Some good work on the social context of infrastructure and the power dynamics that are invisibly embodied within it.

Comment 2. of the top review here is one of the stupidest things I've ever read - "oh, so you've identified some problems with how infrastructure benefits the already powerful; and what, you think they should be solved?". Don't let this put you off. The sections on the way these systems actually impact people are some of the strongest, reminiscent of Jane Jacobs.

For me, one star lost because I found parts of the book quite repetitive. I suspect publishing incentives led to ~150 pages of insight being stretched to fit the ~300 page format

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book to read around Thanksgiving. It gives me an immense feeling of gratitude being one of few women (and people) through all of history with water, heat, light, and cooking fuel delivered straight to my home with no effort on my part.

[Jonas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this is a weird one. There is almost nothing in here that I don’t agree with, and the way Chachra articulates some of these very important things is often simple and beautiful. She even opens with a quote from one of my all-time favorite books, Ursula Franklin’s 'The Real World Of Technology.' So, what’s not to like? Well, the problem is that, while the contents are great, it’s just not very good as a book. While the topic is endlessly interesting and complex, the book itself is very repetitive, to the point where I felt like I was reading the same sentences over and over again. And while multiple volumes could be filled with gripping details or thoughts about infrastructure and its role in our lives, Chachra instead decided to fill this particular book with the modern non-fiction blight that is scenic intros—semi-relevant stories from the author’s life that she comes back to again and again.

The sad state of popular non-fiction writing makes it impossible for me to say if this is due to too much or too little editorial oversight. But these 320 pages could’ve easily been cut down to 100—if that. The strange thing is that, other than the thousands of self-help blog posts turned into bloated productivity books, this could’ve easily been a 2000-page tome without any fluff and still be interesting.

[N N · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title made me think I was going to learn specifics about how different types of infrastructure are set up, function, etc but instead the book is more about a macro perspective on how (and why) we should transform our infrastructure to be more resilient to threats such as deterioration through lack of maintenance, natural disasters, and the effects of climate change, which both could bring down our infrastructure as it stands today and are paradoxically a consequence of how energy-intensive our infrastructure is.

The most interesting point to me was that the earth actually has access to an abundance of energy from renewable sources - and that technology is close to a point where we can start to really use such sources. It was a helpful explanation of why we don’t need to try to reduce our use of energy, but rather change its sources.

I felt the book was much too long and full of attempts at lyrical prose and personal anecdotes that were trying to be cute and nostalgic. That’s not what I was looking for, but the book was still educational and overall I am glad I read it (though admittedly I skipped the whole section on social/ political context of infrastructure and skimmed a lot of other parts that seemed to be too long without making a point).

[Holland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be a cut and dry, black and white, no nonsense book about cold hard stats. Like How It’s Made (2001) in book form or 300 pages of “This vs. That” (ex. roundabout vs. stop sign). So color me surprised when it ended up being a very personal book about the author’s life and experiences with infrastructures. Which is fine, it’s just not what I thought I was signing up for. The facts are there, but they’re sprinkled in, you know?

I went into this with the most rudimentary understanding of what infrastructure was, and I feel like I’m leaving with only slightly (infinitesimally) more knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very well written book; that was not the problem. I think we just needed less personal anecdotes and more infrastructure. I would like to know less about your flights home to see your family (for the third time) and more about how the World Wide Web works because that’s what your title promised me.

[Kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

i assigned this book in a low-level gen ed class, and i thought it would be good for those purposes cause it is incredibly easy to read and has very generic points (particularly about infrastructure as social, political, and thus common good). even then, lots of students complained that the text was too long and difficult, and gave up reading it relatively early on in the semester. i almost wonder if a text that was more edgy or controversial might have been better? i'll probably use it again if i teach this infrastructure class again, but i don't even know what to do with students these days anymore.

[Miguel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it really possible to take such an important topic like this and suffuse it with so much virtual signaling that one becomes hostile to the topic? As it seems that the publishing world can’t help itself but to distribute several books at once on the same subject, the vastly superior Nuts and Bolts by Roma Agrawal and Material World by Ed Conway actually treat very similar ground with a lot more respect to the reader and help one actually understand what undergirds our society rather than go on random tangents.

[Mert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn’t continue after reading “Cars go farther and faster than bikes because they generate more motive power than bikes do…” around page 70.

If you have no idea about infrastructure, you might like this book. I couldn’t continue reading because the book doesn’t offer you anything new. Every chapter looks same and starts with the author’s childhood and how much she liked to visit a place and so on. It is waste of time and money for me.

[0xTraub · Rating 3 out of 5]

As my grandfather would describe: "it's books like these that made me a communism supporting libtard"

[Raj · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts off as you'd expect, talking about what infrastructure is, why it's important, and how it's developed over the course of the last couple of centuries. But I think what makes it special is that it not only discusses this, but also the social implications of infrastructure, its failure modes (the line "sufficiently advanced neglect is indistinguishable from malice" will live, rent-free, in my head for a long time) and how climate change will affect it.

There are short case studies and lots of the author's own anecdotes. In a lot of ways, the book felt more like a manifesto rather than anything else. Chachra's writing is strong, and emotive when it needs to be. She's got a great turn of phrase, and, she drops a lot of hints that she's a sci-fi fan as well (not least the paraphrasing of Clarke's Third Law above).

I came away from the book both energised that we have a blueprint of how we create infrastructure that's physically, socially, and morally, suitable for the 21st century, and also depressed because I know how difficult that it is to achieve, because of corporations with vested interests and politicians who can't think further than the next election cycle.

[Sarah Hehrer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly optimistic rundown of contemporary infrastructure - through a philosophical/social lens, versus a technological one. It’s less “how specific infrastructure projects work logistically” and more “how Infrastructure™️ works in society” - a few good one liners that I think do a good job of explaining where we’re at/what we’re facing as the impacts of climate change make themselves more and more known to all of us.

“To capitalism, sustainability always looks like underutilization”

“…if those decisions are based on financial return, it builds in a bias toward waiting for things to get so bad that remediation-no matter the cost-is cheaper than inaction.”

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think this book was supposed to make me feel more hopeful about our future; it did not. the author seems much more optimistic about humanity’s ability to not only coordinate but cooperate on a global scale.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I work for a utility so I am already familiar with most of these concepts. I was impressed with the author’s ability to distill those concepts down to a palatable and enjoyable read.

[Brent Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

With all of the rave reviews for this book, I'm afraid I came to it with high expectations, especially with a mindset toward how it could be a treatise along the lines of the popular "How Stuff Works" website's articles. Being a civil engineer myself, that was a particularly appealing vision to me. And given the author is a materials science engineer, I convinced myself that's what I'd find.

However, that's not what this book is. Instead, it's more helpful to approach this book more as an economics-style approach, more along the lines of "How Infrastructure Should Work." So what you'll find is a very big-picture view of how things like power networks and telecom infrastructure don't quite reach all of the people who'd benefit from access. And how harms of these networks ("negative externalities," in econ-speak; like being forced to leave your home so the infrastructure can be built) tends to affect the very groups who have minimal economic or social standing to fight for their rights.

Along the way, it's nevertheless fair to say that you will be introduced to some very interesting stories of actual infrastructure and systems - like the Hoover Dam, LA's highway network, and the Dinorwig Power Station. I do feel the book would have benefitted from more explorations of systems like these, as the higher-level and more economics-driven observations became quite repetitive over the course of the book. And I felt like there could have been more detailed discussion of specific challenges involved in making infrastructure work for the people it needs to serve. For example, the costs to maintain infrastructure can be truly difficult - e.g., here in my home city of Pittsburgh, monthly water bills tripled practically overnight back in 2019-2020 as the city struggled to repair aging pipeline networks and to remove large swathes of lead piping. While we're all happy to be recipients of a safer, more reliable water supply, the spike in costs to receive that benefit proved to be crippling to many.

In any case, it's an interesting book with some important takeaways and colorful examples. But, if you're like me, you might find yourself skimming over some of the more abstract (and repetitive) economics discussion to get back to the meat of the narrative.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not finish. I didn’t know very much about infrastructure when I started reading, and I didn’t learn very much by the time I gave up. I learned more about the author’s travel itinerary than I did about the topic of the book.

[Mark Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle of this book, referring to systems that shape our world, describes the understated significance of infrastructure. Deb Chachra takes material that is fascinating from an engineering perspective alone, and presents it in its essential societal significance. Infrastructure drives culture more than many are willing to admit, as it underpins essential functions of daily life while hidden in plain sight and often not noticed—until it stops functioning. Very few people have been unaffected by an outage of power, water, or telecommunications service, or been stranded when planes are grounded, trains aren't running, or roads are closed.

Chachra clearly describes why infrastructure must be functional, resilient, sustainable, and equitable—with today's climate and population challenges, this also requires infrastructure to be of a smaller scale, distributed, and reversible. And the author aptly points out that there is abundant energy available from sustainable renewables. To achieve a practical solution, Chachra suggests six actionable principles for a new ultrastructure. Those are:
1. Plan for abundant energy and finite materials
2. Design for resilience, rather than efficiency
3. Build for flexibility, including being decentralized but federated
4. Move toward an ethics of care, including provision for maintenance
5. Recognize, prioritize, and defend non-monetary benefits—we are each more than our economic capacity
6. Make it public—no short term profit and negative externalities

The question is: why is this essential foundation of our very culture kept in the hands of those whose purpose is profit over the public good? The answer is both obvious and ugly—governments that abdicate their civic duty and serve primarily the bank accounts of oligarchs allow infrastructure to function foremost as a means of extraction of wealth from those not wealthy enough to influence public policy. The obvious correction to that ugliness is popular pressure for public policies that prioritize public services over oligarchic demands—this will require a population that is both educated on the issues and with common agency for the common good. In countries with functioning democracies, elections are the means of doing that once candidates and proposals are available to vote on. In any country, whether or not its democratic, no government has withstood a nonviolent campaign that mobilized at least 3.5% of the population in sustained protest at its peak and with effective organization—it's time to put that theory into practice toward the infrastructure goals Chachra presents.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughtful, informative, and introspective musings on the merging of engineering, economics, and politics. She uses the term ultrastructure to refer to some of our infrastructure. This is more about the social, political, and philosophical ideas behind infrastructure. Public good vs public goods. Cooperation and caring versus capitalism. Decoupling networks from combustion and just changing paradigms. We will never want for energy in the future as renewables are endless but we still have the scarcity mindset. She barely mentions hydrogen and doesn’t mention AI. Good discussion about sustainability. Lots to ponder. The future with climate change can work if we plan properly and work together.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really sure I learned a whole lot from this book, but I did enjoy reading it. It was a good reminder about how much our lives depend on the infrastructure around us and how we are very much in danger of ignoring it's maintenance at our own peril. She also digs into the social and political aspects of infrastructure in addition to examining some of the actual infrastructure systems themselves. It made me stop and appreciate all the things I use to go about my daily life just expecting them to work for me.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love two thirds of this book, but it was denser and more textbook-like than I expected at times. This is to its credit since it means the author is staying rooted in statistics and serious methodology but doesn’t always make for compelling reading.

I love the ending of the book and the six heuristics to think of with architecture. She acknowledges the complexity and lack of a one-size fits all solution, but knows that we crave some sort of baseline or reference.

[COLLEEN FITZPATRICK · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deb Chachra writes a very personal, human explanation of how systems we take for granted work. She’s endlessly entertaining in presenting scientific and historic material. Most encouraging, though, is her view that rising to meet the needs of climate change and shortages does NOT mean deprivation. Instead, she paints a picture of how changing our infrastructure thoughtfully can result in plenty for all, sharing our comforts with much of the world that our current systems have left behind.

A great read!

[e_evergreen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book should have been a three page essay. The book reiterates the same problems over and over with no solutions. I could sum the entire this up in 1,000 words. I think the author makes an excellent point but I did not need 320 pages of examples of the same thing over and over.
Unless you are an engineer student, I doubt this book is for you.

[Max Cohen-Casado · Rating 3 out of 5]

An informed discussion on the role and use of infrastructure throughout society. The last few chapters on how we need to not only modernize but also rethink the types of infrastructure needed for the future were particularly thought-provoking.

[Chris]

What should be a public vs. private service? How are common resources fairly distributed? When should socialistic vs. free market systems make these decisions?

Also Tring, again! (The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, Gone: Stories of Extinction)

I swung from optimism to despair to skepticism, but in the end, this is my "Hope" square on the 2025 Seattle Public Library Summer Book Bingo card.