'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 as well as the threats to our infrastructure in a changing world. From Snowdonia's
Electric Mountain to a solar plant in southern 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.
