Available Formats
Hardback
Published: 21st November 2023
Hardback
Published: 2nd December 2023
Paperback
Published: 20th February 2024
How Infrastructure Works: The systems that run our world - and how we fix them
By (Author) Deb Chachra
Transworld Publishers Ltd
Torva
2nd December 2023
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Science: general issues
363
Hardback
320
Width 162mm, Height 236mm, Spine 32mm
520g
'Pulsing with wisdom and humanity, How Infrastructure Works is a masterpiece' Ed Yong
'You won't see the world the same after reading this book!' Austin Kleon
Every day, we are granted the power to travel at high speeds, fly, see in the dark, summon water from distant mountains and electricity from the sun. The systems that run our world are invisible to us until they fail.
Infrastructure enables lives of astounding ease and freedom that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. These technological systems - the most complex and vast ever created by humans - have allowed us to work collectively for the public good. But these systems are now beginning to fail us.
Engineering professor Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, and just how much they shape our lives - but also the price they extract, who pays it and in what ways, and the threats to our infrastructure in a changing world.
From Snowdonia's Electric Mountain to a solar plant in Telangana, India, Chachra shows how we can rebuild our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. We need to learn how to see these systems and to transform them, together, because the cost of not being able to rely on them is unthinkably high.
The urgent problems of the modern era have instilled in so many of us a deep craving to more clearly see the systems that define our lives, to better understand when and why they fail, and to regain agency over a world that can seem too complex to understand much less affect. Fortunately, Deb Chachra has written exactly the book we needed. Revelatory, superbly written, and pulsing with wisdom and humanity, How Infrastructure Works is a masterpiece. -- Ed Yong, author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes
Deb Chachra provides a helpful and hopeful guide to understanding the hidden systems that keep our everyday lives going. You won't see the world the same after reading this book! -- Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist
A wonderful, wide-ranging narrative addressing the technical, social, personal, historical, and political aspects of the often-disregarded, invisible systems that support us. Forged of a huge heart and vast expertise, it shines with fierce humanity. -- Helen Macdonald, author of Vesper Flights and H Is for Hawk
Deb Chachra is the perfect guide not just to how infrastructure works but also how it feels. This book is just like the power plants it describes: a precise machine, a fountain of energy. -- Robin Sloan, author of Sourdough and Mr Penumbras 24-Hour Bookstore
How Infrastructure Works gives you x-ray vision into our built environment. It's also a ton of fun to read; Chachra is a gifted stylist and a first-rate intellectual guide. -- Clive Thompson, author of Coders
A hopeful, lyrical - even beautiful - hymn to the systems of mutual aid we embed in our material world, from sewers to roads to the power grid. * Cory Doctorow, author of Red Team Blues *
Deb Chachra is a professor at Olin College of Engineering with a technical background in engineering physics and materials science. She writes the newsletter Metafoundry and creates and communicates widely at the intersection of technology and society, including pieces for The Atlantic, the Guardian, the journal Nature, and the comic book Bitch Planet. Her research and ideas have been recognized and supported by awards from the Sloan Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Autodesk, and others. Chachra lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.