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Maintenance of Everything: Part One
The first in-depth exploration of maintenance—and a powerful argument for its civilizational importance—from the author of How Buildings Learn and creator of the Whole Earth Catalog.
Maintenance is what keeps everything going. It’s what keeps life going. Yet it’s also easy to shirk or defer—until the thing breaks, the system falters, and everything stops. The apparent paradox is Maintenance is absolutely necessary and maintenance is optional.
The first in a multi-volume work, Of Everything, Part One offers a comprehensive overview of the civilizational importance of maintenance. The book begins with a dramatic contest of maintenance styles under life-critical the Golden Globe around-the-world solo sailboat race of 1968. It goes on to explore the insights that can be gleaned from vehicle maintenance, from the zeal of motorcycle maintainers to the maintenance philosophies that fought for dominance of the auto industry to the state of electric vehicle manufacturing today, with absorbing detours into the evolution of precision in manufacturing, the enduring importance of manuals, sustainment in the military, and the never-ending battle against corrosion.
Of Everything is a wide-ranging and provocative call to expand what we mean by “maintenance”—not just the tiresome preventative tasks but the whole grand process of keeping a thing going. It invites us to understand not only the profound impact maintenance has on our daily lives but also why taking responsibility for maintaining something—whether a motorcycle, a monument, or our very planet—can be a radical act.
Maintenance is what keeps everything going. It’s what keeps life going. Yet it’s also easy to shirk or defer—until the thing breaks, the system falters, and everything stops. The apparent paradox is Maintenance is absolutely necessary and maintenance is optional.
The first in a multi-volume work, Of Everything, Part One offers a comprehensive overview of the civilizational importance of maintenance. The book begins with a dramatic contest of maintenance styles under life-critical the Golden Globe around-the-world solo sailboat race of 1968. It goes on to explore the insights that can be gleaned from vehicle maintenance, from the zeal of motorcycle maintainers to the maintenance philosophies that fought for dominance of the auto industry to the state of electric vehicle manufacturing today, with absorbing detours into the evolution of precision in manufacturing, the enduring importance of manuals, sustainment in the military, and the never-ending battle against corrosion.
Of Everything is a wide-ranging and provocative call to expand what we mean by “maintenance”—not just the tiresome preventative tasks but the whole grand process of keeping a thing going. It invites us to understand not only the profound impact maintenance has on our daily lives but also why taking responsibility for maintaining something—whether a motorcycle, a monument, or our very planet—can be a radical act.
308 pages, Hardcover
Published January 20, 2026
137 people are currently reading
982 people want to read
About the author
Stewart Brand
60 books310 followersStewart Brand was a pioneer in the environmental movement in the 60s – his Whole Earth Catalog became the Bible for sustainable living, selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. Brand is President of The Long Now Foundation and chairs the foundation's Seminars About Long-term Thinking.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
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January 5, 2026This was an enjoyable read (I read it almost in one sitting), but it felt more like a collection of stories than a cohesive book. This book focuses mostly on vehicles (sailboats, motorcycles, and cars) and weapons, which is a much narrower scope than I expected (I didn't realize it would be part one of a series when I preordered it). I appreciated the overarching philosophy of maintenance, and I'm looking forward to seeing that philosophy being applied to other topics.
November 30, 2025
Great topic, well executed with interesting stories. Overall narrative, however, was clearly lacking.
January 26, 2026
I loved the beginning of the book and found most of it genuinely engaging. However, I did find the Tesla promotion at the end a bit jarring—especially given how closely the right-to-repair movement relates to the book’s themes, yet goes unaddressed.
The first three-quarters of the book are consistently compelling, and while I was hoping for a more comprehensive treatment of the topic, I’ll still be picking up Part Two.
The first three-quarters of the book are consistently compelling, and while I was hoping for a more comprehensive treatment of the topic, I’ll still be picking up Part Two.
February 6, 2026
Stewart Brand is 87 years old. I became aware of him in 1972 when I first read the "Whole Earth Catalog". I subscribed to the Co-evolution Quarterly for the ten years of its existence. I hadn't seen anything by him for quite a while.
This new book is classic Stewart Brand. His approach has always been to combine high level theories of what a good person should do and what a true good life looks like with hyper practical and useful information about how to do things. He taught his readers how to find out how to build a house, or a yurt. He curated tools for butchering your own meat or how to repair your VW bus. At the same time, he explained why doing these things yourself was noble and would help save you and the planet. He walked a tightrope over empty preaching and home repair books.
I was very pleased to see that he is still at it. This book spirals out from one important idea. Maintenance and repair of our tools make the difference. He acknowledges that maintenance can be boring, expensive and difficult, but it has to be done, and it is possible to enjoy, or, at least, appreciate it.
Brand is a great storyteller, and he makes his case with great examples. He starts with the 1968 London Times contest. They offered a large prize for the first person to sail solo around the world without touching land. There are three famous stories from the race. One is about the winner. One is about a guy who cheated and the third is about a guy who never finished. Brand argues that the key to all three stories is the approach to maintenance and repair taken by each sailor. He makes his case.
Every story perfectly makes a point.
Brand argues that the course of the Russian-Ukraine War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and Egypt were the result of the fact that Ukraine and Israel were better at maintaining and repairing equipment that Russia and Egypt were.
He shows that in 1986, $277 million had to be spent to completely rebuild the inside of the Statue of Liberty because the US Park Service never funded for proper maintenance on the Statute.
He has a section on six great manuals, including the Ford Model T service manual and a 1651 English ""Directory for Midwifes". Brand argues they you need to always read the manual and he has very smart suggestions and examples of how the manuals can get better.
This is advertised as Volume One. I look forward to Volume two. Brand is a clear and enthusiastic writer. He conveys his excitement in finding out interesting stuff and figuring out how it all fits together.
This new book is classic Stewart Brand. His approach has always been to combine high level theories of what a good person should do and what a true good life looks like with hyper practical and useful information about how to do things. He taught his readers how to find out how to build a house, or a yurt. He curated tools for butchering your own meat or how to repair your VW bus. At the same time, he explained why doing these things yourself was noble and would help save you and the planet. He walked a tightrope over empty preaching and home repair books.
I was very pleased to see that he is still at it. This book spirals out from one important idea. Maintenance and repair of our tools make the difference. He acknowledges that maintenance can be boring, expensive and difficult, but it has to be done, and it is possible to enjoy, or, at least, appreciate it.
Brand is a great storyteller, and he makes his case with great examples. He starts with the 1968 London Times contest. They offered a large prize for the first person to sail solo around the world without touching land. There are three famous stories from the race. One is about the winner. One is about a guy who cheated and the third is about a guy who never finished. Brand argues that the key to all three stories is the approach to maintenance and repair taken by each sailor. He makes his case.
Every story perfectly makes a point.
Brand argues that the course of the Russian-Ukraine War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and Egypt were the result of the fact that Ukraine and Israel were better at maintaining and repairing equipment that Russia and Egypt were.
He shows that in 1986, $277 million had to be spent to completely rebuild the inside of the Statue of Liberty because the US Park Service never funded for proper maintenance on the Statute.
He has a section on six great manuals, including the Ford Model T service manual and a 1651 English ""Directory for Midwifes". Brand argues they you need to always read the manual and he has very smart suggestions and examples of how the manuals can get better.
This is advertised as Volume One. I look forward to Volume two. Brand is a clear and enthusiastic writer. He conveys his excitement in finding out interesting stuff and figuring out how it all fits together.
January 29, 2026
This book is built around a thesis that feels both obvious and oddly underappreciated: maintenance matters. We tend to celebrate the dramatic act of creation or victory and then quietly ignore the unglamorous work of keeping things functioning. Wars are won not just by brilliant strategies but by supply chains that do not collapse. Boat races are decided by who notices the hairline crack. Bikes, cars, institutions, even civilizations fail less from sudden catastrophe than from accumulated neglect.
That core idea is strong and genuinely useful. Once you notice it, you start seeing maintenance failures everywhere, often hiding behind stories we tell ourselves about incompetence, bad luck, or moral decay. In that sense, the book succeeds at installing a new mental lens, which is usually the highest compliment I can give nonfiction.
Where it struggles is coherence. The examples are interesting in isolation, but they often feel stacked rather than integrated. We move from wars to boats to engines to social systems without a clear sense of progression, and the argument sometimes feels more like a collage than a structure. I kept expecting a tighter framework that would explain when maintenance matters most, how it breaks down, or how incentives reliably fail around it. Those insights are gestured at but not fully developed.
The result is a book that is more suggestive than satisfying. You finish convinced that maintenance is underrated, but less clear on what to do with that knowledge beyond nodding wisely when something breaks. I enjoyed reading it, I underlined passages, and I will probably reference it in conversation. I just wished it had been a bit more disciplined in maintaining its own argument.
That core idea is strong and genuinely useful. Once you notice it, you start seeing maintenance failures everywhere, often hiding behind stories we tell ourselves about incompetence, bad luck, or moral decay. In that sense, the book succeeds at installing a new mental lens, which is usually the highest compliment I can give nonfiction.
Where it struggles is coherence. The examples are interesting in isolation, but they often feel stacked rather than integrated. We move from wars to boats to engines to social systems without a clear sense of progression, and the argument sometimes feels more like a collage than a structure. I kept expecting a tighter framework that would explain when maintenance matters most, how it breaks down, or how incentives reliably fail around it. Those insights are gestured at but not fully developed.
The result is a book that is more suggestive than satisfying. You finish convinced that maintenance is underrated, but less clear on what to do with that knowledge beyond nodding wisely when something breaks. I enjoyed reading it, I underlined passages, and I will probably reference it in conversation. I just wished it had been a bit more disciplined in maintaining its own argument.
January 29, 2026
A book dedicated to the topic of maintenance? Great! Such a potential. Just imagine how many topics can be covered here:
- analysis of entropy (in different context)
- how cost of running depends on the specifics of industry
- right to repair - yay or nay?
- should decommissioning cost be covered in the cost of goods?
- potential consequences of past bad decisions we are yet to face (e.g., asbestos, "large plate" building construction)
- and so on and so forth
I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book, so as soon as it was published, I put it in the front of my reading queue. And? ...
First of all, I was surprised it's just "Part One". I mean - I realize the topic is huge, but ... what was the division criteria? How did the author determine what lands in P1 and what doesn't? Sorry, but it's kinda unclear ;/
The book itself ... well, let's say the composition disappoints. Like hell. Why? Because there's no real structure here, no clear chain of thought, no mental model, no classification. This book feels like a collection of essays (some of them more interesting, some less) dedicated to "maintenance" in general. Some of those stories are quite amusing (M16, Golden Globe award), some are either meh or already exploited (Tesla).
The book itself is actually quite short, so it was over until I started getting impatient :) In the end - the promise was alluring, but I find the execution lacking. To such a degree, that I'm not sure if I reach for the Part 2.
- analysis of entropy (in different context)
- how cost of running depends on the specifics of industry
- right to repair - yay or nay?
- should decommissioning cost be covered in the cost of goods?
- potential consequences of past bad decisions we are yet to face (e.g., asbestos, "large plate" building construction)
- and so on and so forth
I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book, so as soon as it was published, I put it in the front of my reading queue. And? ...
First of all, I was surprised it's just "Part One". I mean - I realize the topic is huge, but ... what was the division criteria? How did the author determine what lands in P1 and what doesn't? Sorry, but it's kinda unclear ;/
The book itself ... well, let's say the composition disappoints. Like hell. Why? Because there's no real structure here, no clear chain of thought, no mental model, no classification. This book feels like a collection of essays (some of them more interesting, some less) dedicated to "maintenance" in general. Some of those stories are quite amusing (M16, Golden Globe award), some are either meh or already exploited (Tesla).
The book itself is actually quite short, so it was over until I started getting impatient :) In the end - the promise was alluring, but I find the execution lacking. To such a degree, that I'm not sure if I reach for the Part 2.
January 27, 2026
This is a delightful, informative discourse on the concept of maintenance and its importance to health, mechanical functioning, mission accomplishment, goal sustainment - all aspects of life and its activities and devices. The author's extensive examples are fascinating - the 1968 sailboat race around the world, the Ford Model-T and in comparison Rolls-Royce, the impetus in national armories to create weapons with inter-changeable parts and the long term explosion of engineering, manufacturing and quality of life advancements that ensued. He relates the Soviet AK47 with the US M16, the re-emergence of electric vehicles (first invented before 1900 and before gas vehicles!) and more. The book contains one delightful revelation after another.
Although predominantly objective in his approach, the author loses objectivity a couple of times - he repeats misconceptions and urban myths about the lethality and wounding characteristics of the cartridge fired in the M16, and he extols the modern electric vehicle as a panacea. Both are emotional aspirations, reflecting personal bias rather than dispassionate discourse. Nevertheless, the book is so interesting, so delightful, in all other aspects that this is more of a quibble than a complaint. I note that the title contains the modifier "Part One" - assuming there is Part Two coming, I will absolutely buy it and read it!!
Although predominantly objective in his approach, the author loses objectivity a couple of times - he repeats misconceptions and urban myths about the lethality and wounding characteristics of the cartridge fired in the M16, and he extols the modern electric vehicle as a panacea. Both are emotional aspirations, reflecting personal bias rather than dispassionate discourse. Nevertheless, the book is so interesting, so delightful, in all other aspects that this is more of a quibble than a complaint. I note that the title contains the modifier "Part One" - assuming there is Part Two coming, I will absolutely buy it and read it!!
January 29, 2026
Brand tackles essential territory: maintenance as philosophy, not mere upkeep. In our use-once-and-destroy present, his framework for iterative care and anti-fragile systems feels urgent and necessary. The collaborative writing process - open process, iterated online with experts and fans - models the adaptive thinking he advocates.
But the examples reveal troubling blind spots. Boats, motorcycles, guns, wars - Brand shows maintenance filtered almost exclusively through traditionally masculine objects. “Creative genius Elon Musk” and uncritical praise of IDF organization lands very poorly in 2025, not necessarily because the principles are wrong, but because Brand seems unaware of how these choices frame his argument. I expect more width in the next book.
A bit like Richard Dawkins, Brand risks drifting toward being seen as an irrelevant old sod, not because of declining intellect but due to his unexamined defaults. He would benefit from stepping outside his demographic comfort zone. His ideas deserve it. Read the book for the fundamental idea, but be prepared to cut Brand’s choice of examples some slack. The old counterculture hero has earned it.
But the examples reveal troubling blind spots. Boats, motorcycles, guns, wars - Brand shows maintenance filtered almost exclusively through traditionally masculine objects. “Creative genius Elon Musk” and uncritical praise of IDF organization lands very poorly in 2025, not necessarily because the principles are wrong, but because Brand seems unaware of how these choices frame his argument. I expect more width in the next book.
A bit like Richard Dawkins, Brand risks drifting toward being seen as an irrelevant old sod, not because of declining intellect but due to his unexamined defaults. He would benefit from stepping outside his demographic comfort zone. His ideas deserve it. Read the book for the fundamental idea, but be prepared to cut Brand’s choice of examples some slack. The old counterculture hero has earned it.
February 10, 2026
Most would probably describe maintenance as a necessary evil. It doesn't involve flashy creativity. It's often extremely rote manual labor performed repeatedly. However, Brand and many of the subjects of this book seem to have fallen in love with it. There's a primeval beauty to doing routine sailboat, motorcycle, or gun maintenance or the like.
The inherent tradeoff in maintenance is this: giving up significantly more time overall to have fewer and less catastrophic failures. Some could argue that maintenance isn't worth it...the labor hours involved in keeping a motorcycle in tip-top shape could probably pay for a new one. Brand makes a compelling argument for why this tradeoff is worth it...it's far better to be prepared when you're in on a sailboat in the roaring forties than the alternative.
The book doesn't, however, offer much practical advice on how to incorporate maintenance into our daily routines. Instead, it focuses on examples of maintenance going right or going horribly wrong. It's a fun read and I certainly learned a lot, especially about how shit of a gun the M16 is. That isn't exactly the most useful information though.
My takeaway from the book was that I need to do more maintenance. It did not, however, give great advice on the best methods for maintenance. What's the best frequency for maintenance? When does prepping turn into overkill? At what point does maintenance take away from creativity?
I guess those are questions I'll have to grapple with on my own ;)
All reviews:
https://bingham.dev/book-reviews
The inherent tradeoff in maintenance is this: giving up significantly more time overall to have fewer and less catastrophic failures. Some could argue that maintenance isn't worth it...the labor hours involved in keeping a motorcycle in tip-top shape could probably pay for a new one. Brand makes a compelling argument for why this tradeoff is worth it...it's far better to be prepared when you're in on a sailboat in the roaring forties than the alternative.
The book doesn't, however, offer much practical advice on how to incorporate maintenance into our daily routines. Instead, it focuses on examples of maintenance going right or going horribly wrong. It's a fun read and I certainly learned a lot, especially about how shit of a gun the M16 is. That isn't exactly the most useful information though.
My takeaway from the book was that I need to do more maintenance. It did not, however, give great advice on the best methods for maintenance. What's the best frequency for maintenance? When does prepping turn into overkill? At what point does maintenance take away from creativity?
I guess those are questions I'll have to grapple with on my own ;)
All reviews:
https://bingham.dev/book-reviews
February 8, 2026
This may be the laziest book i've ever read. Towards the second half all effort is abandoned to tie the different threads into a common theme. This is a sub-par substack being sold as a book by an 87 year old has been. And it's part one? You're almost 90! Just another old man unable to deal with his own mortality, I've read his other books and his biography, like many people of his generation he should have stepped aside and enabled a new generation instead of showcasing rather than concealing the decline of their abilities.
February 7, 2026
Brand пропонує радикально переосмислити саме поняття "maintenance". Замість того, щоб розглядати його як набір нудних рутинних завдань - "почистити прокляті зуби, змінити прокляте мастило" - він запрошує нас побачити в обслуговуванні "весь величний процес підтримки функціонування речі". Це не просто технічна діяльність, а форма відповідальності, турботи та, як стверджує автор, навіть радикальний акт опору домінуючій культурі споживання.
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January 30, 202615% maintenance, the rest is business or war strategy.
When he talks about maintenance, it's wonderful. But I found him veering into other topics that, while interesting, aren't about maintenance.
When he talks about maintenance, it's wonderful. But I found him veering into other topics that, while interesting, aren't about maintenance.
Review of advance copy
Arrived in the mail early. One of the best books I'll read this year.
4.5.
4.5.
January 25, 2026
Wide-ranging but also deep enough to be engaging. Cool binding and print layout. Hits the best parts of several books I’ve read, and made me add a couple new ones to the list.
January 27, 2026
Entertaining and easy to read thoughts on how manufacturing and maintenance are intertwined.
Draws on his military experience
Draws on his military experience
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews