Stewart Brand’s new book, *Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One*, argues that sustaining complex systems—from sailboats to weapons—is as vital as innovation. Drawing on decades of work with the Whole Earth Catalog, Brand reframes upkeep as a radical act of responsibility, exploring corrosion, manuals, and precision in manufacturing.

The book arrives alongside Brian Potter’s *The Origins of Efficiency*, which traces production gains in steel and semiconductors. Together, these works challenge a tech culture obsessed with the new, urging engineers and leaders to value the long-term care of existing infrastructure, from factories to digital systems.

Next, Dwarkesh Patel’s *The Scaling Era* documents AI’s rise through interviews with figures like Dario Amodei and Ilya Sutskever. This trio of books provides a toolkit for understanding the technological and material foundations of our world, emphasizing that progress depends on both creation and upkeep.