Get the Summary of Deb Chachra's How Infrastructure Works in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "How Infrastructure Works" by Deb Chachra is a comprehensive exploration of the intricate web of infrastructural systems that underpin modern life. Chachra's personal journey, from her childhood fascination with megastructures to her professional expertise in materials science, informs her insights into the elegance and collective nature of infrastructure. She discusses the omnipresence of infrastructure, its evolution alongside societal changes, and the role of engineering in harnessing physical phenomena to connect and sustain communities...

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "Revelatory, superbly written, and pulsing with wisdom and humanity, How Infrastructure Works is a masterpiece.” —Ed Yong, author of An Immense World A new way of seeing the essential systems hidden inside our walls, under our streets, and all around us Infrastructure is a marvel, meeting our basic needs and enabling lives of astounding ease and productivity that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. It is the physical manifestation of our social contract—of our ability to work collectively for the public good—and it consists of the most complex and vast technological systems ever created by humans. A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. When these systems work well, they hide in plain sight. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs. Across the U.S. and elsewhere, these systems are suffering from systemic neglect and the effects of climate change, becoming unavoidably visible when they break down. Communities that are already marginalized often bear the brunt of these failures. But Chachra maps out a path for transforming and rebuilding our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. The cost of not being able to rely on these systems is unthinkably high. We need to learn how to see them—and fix them, together—before it’s too late.

“Innovation” is the hottest buzzword in business. But what if our obsession with finding the next big thing has distracted us from the work that matters most? “The most important book I’ve read in a long time . . . It explains so much about what is wrong with our technology, our economy, and the world, and gives a simple recipe for how to fix it: Focus on understanding what it takes for your products and services to last.”—Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media It’s hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it’s genuinely a new invention or just a new toothbrush. But in this manifesto on thestate of American work, historians of technology Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell argue that our way of thinking about and pursuing innovation has made us poorer, less safe, and—ironically—less innovative. Drawing on years of original research and reporting, The Innovation Delusion shows how the ideology of change for its own sake has proved a disaster. Corporations have spent millions hiring chief innovation officers while their core businesses tank. Computer science programs have drilled their students on programming and design, even though theoverwhelming majority of jobs are in IT and maintenance. In countless cities, suburban sprawl has left local governments with loads of deferred repairs that they can’t afford to fix. And sometimes innovation even kills—like in 2018 when a Miami bridge hailed for its innovative design collapsed onto a highway and killed six people. In this provocative, deeply researched book, Vinsel and Russell tell the story of how we devalued the work that underpins modern life—and, in doing so, wrecked our economy and public infrastructure while lining the pockets of consultants who combine the ego of Silicon Valley with the worst of Wall Street’s greed. The authors offer a compelling plan for how we can shift our focus away from the pursuit of growth at all costs, and back toward neglected activities like maintenance, care, and upkeep. For anyone concerned by the crumbling state of our roads and bridges or the direction our economy is headed, The Innovation Delusion is a deeply necessary reevaluation of a trend we can still disrupt.

While our cities are full of incredible engineering feats, most of us live with little idea of what goes into creating the built environment, let alone how a new building goes up, what it is built upon, or how it remains standing. In this book, Roma Agrawal uncovers the astonishing science behind her profession. Each of the eight chapters will tackle a great engineering challenge - how we keep a building from falling down or how a bridge is built to span vast distances - explaining solutions from modern times, while reaching back to the Romans and other ancient cultures who developed techniques still used today. Interweaving science, history, illustrations, and personal stories, Built offers a fascinating window into a subject that makes up the foundation of our everyday lives.

“A New Civil Rights Leader” explores what we mean when we speak of democracy and if democracy can truly ever exist (LA Times). There is no shortage of democracy, at least in name, and yet it is in crisis everywhere we look. From a cabal of plutocrats in the White House to gerrymandering and dark-money campaign contributions, it is clear that the principle of government by and for the people is not living up to its promise. The problems lie deeper than any one election cycle. As Astra Taylor demonstrates, real democracy—fully inclusive and completely egalitarian—has in fact never existed. In a tone that is both philosophical and anecdotal, weaving together history, theory, the stories of individuals, and interviews with such leading thinkers as Cornel West and Wendy Brown, Taylor invites us to reexamine the term. Is democracy a means or an end, a process or a set of desired outcomes? What if those outcomes, whatever they may be—peace, prosperity, equality, liberty, an engaged citizenry—can be achieved by non-democratic means? In what areas of life should democratic principles apply? If democracy means rule by the people, what does it mean to rule and who counts as the people? Democracy’s inherent paradoxes often go unnamed and unrecognized. Exploring such questions, Democracy May Not Exist offers a better understanding of what is possible, what we want, why democracy is so hard to realize, and why it is worth striving for. “Astra Taylor will change how you think about democracy. . . . She unpacks it, wrestles with it, with the question of who gets included and how, and excavates the invisible assumptions that have been bred into our idea of democracy.” —Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show “An impressive contribution. . . . Taylor sets out to impart some coherence and substance to the term in order to rescue it from ignorance and obfuscation and displays considerable intellectual nimbleness.” —Randall Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent, paradigm-shifting . . . Taylor’s deep and wide examination of democratic movements, conversations, and grassroots institutions makes the reader feel . . . democracy as pleasure of thinking and acting.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and LitHub Winner of the 2021 Science in Society Journalism Book Prize A fascinating and provocative new way of looking at the things we use and the spaces we inhabit, and a call to imagine a better-designed world for us all. Furniture and tools, kitchens and campuses and city streets—nearly everything human beings make and use is assistive technology, meant to bridge the gap between body and world. Yet unless, or until, a misfit between our own body and the world is acute enough to be understood as disability, we may never stop to consider—or reconsider—the hidden assumptions on which our everyday environment is built. In a series of vivid stories drawn from the lived experience of disability and the ideas and innovations that have emerged from it—from cyborg arms to customizable cardboard chairs to deaf architecture—Sara Hendren invites us to rethink the things and settings we live with. What might assistance based on the body’s stunning capacity for adaptation—rather than a rigid insistence on “normalcy”—look like? Can we foster interdependent, not just independent, living? How do we creatively engineer public spaces that allow us all to navigate our common terrain? By rendering familiar objects and environments newly strange and wondrous, What Can a Body Do? helps us imagine a future that will better meet the extraordinary range of our collective needs and desires.

SEIZE THE ADVANTAGE IN THE GLOBAL WAR FOR MARKET SHARE Winner of the 2013 Small Business Book Award - Top 10 Overall The newest economic behemoth, China, is snatching market share from the U.S., Japan, and Europe at an alarming rate. But China isn't alone. The world's largest producers of biofuel, meat, consumer electronics, regional jets, baked goods, candy, and many other products are all emerging market multinationals (EMMs). And industries poised to be taken over by EMMs include personal computers, IT services, mining, wind turbines, and cement. The balance of power in the global economy is shifting. Are you in a position to compete with the most energetic, imaginative companies on the planet? In Emerging Markets Rule, two experts on the global shift in economic hegemony explain what is happening, why it is happening--and how you can prevent it from happening to you. The authors provide an action plan based on leaner, more operationally proficient ways for maintaining the competitive advantage based on seven new axioms of global competitiveness: Execute, strategize, and execute again Cater to the niches Scale to win Embrace chaos Acquire smart Expand with abandon No sacred cows! Emerging market multinationals are here to stay; they're not going to go away, even when the global economy rights itself. "What began as a necessity--a kind of guerilla-business warfare against the corporate superpowers--has now evolved into best practices and is on its way to becoming what everyone needs to know," the authors write. "Simply put, down is up. The weak have become strong." You need to learn these new "best practices" now because tomorrow will be too late. Emerging Markets Rule is your road map for business success in the increasingly competitive, chaotic global markets. "Emerging-market multinationals have reshaped global competition. Using well-articulated views duly substantiated with facts, this book explains why and how they have become formidable players in both high-technology and traditional industries. This book is a worthy read for businesses and individuals alike seeking to comprehend the phenomenon of the emerging market multinational." -- S. D. Shibulal, CEO and Managing Director , Infosys "This book shows the strength and potential of companies that stand out in emerging markets, reaffirming entrepreneurship, innovation, and sustainability as fundamental factors for the outbreak of global competitors." -- Alessandro Carlucci , CEO, Natura Cosmeticos "The authors have touched on an important idea that emerging market growth can often be tapped by companies located in those markets. This is an essential book leading us to identify the niche markets and strategies for those emerging markets. A must for all international companies with growth ambitions." -- Leonard A. Lauder, Chairman Emeritus, The Estee Lauder Companies "A must-read for any company on its way to becoming a global one. You will learn from companies that have developed unique ways of competing in tough markets such as China and India." -- Jorge Zarate , China General Manager, Grupo Bimbo