How Infrastructure Works

This book is a fascinating look at different infrastructural systems and the general principles that underlie their development, use, and impact. While there's a bit of engineering detail here, it's utilized to illustrate particular points, and Chachra doesn't review how specific systems work in their entirety. This can get a bit frustrating as I did want to know more about those inner workings, and the book jumps around between different systems rather than sticking with a specific system for a chapter. This book does, however, demonstrate how true infrastructure is fundamentally a public good, built for both the present and the future but inextricably linked with the past, and how myopic, short term economic calculations are comically bad at conveying the value of these systems. Chachra also convincingly shows that these mostly ignored systems can drive huge quality of life and economic differences and that those differences need to be accounted for when considering who and what is responsible for individual, firm, or country success. Highly recommend

I thought this one started off a bit slow and anecdote-heavy which is a complaint I've had about several recent nonfiction books I've read. Fortunately this time those anecdotes were just laying the emotional groundwork for a treatise on how our (humans in general, but particularly humans in wealthier countries) lives are only possible as we know them because of big investments in infrastructure made decades ago.

I appreciated the author's emphasis on needing not just to invest in maintenance of what we have but a hopeful tone about what's possible if we rethink our tendency toward large centralized structures and consider smaller, more localized solutions that can be combined (like a series of smart micro-grids for power that use wind in windy areas or solar in sunny areas but also use storage and interconnects to let those solutions complement and supplement each other).