But it seems a bit "Maintenance: For Boys". The items mentioned on this page are "the maintenance of sailboats, vehicles, and weapons", and "Soviet tanks, or tricked-out Model Ts".

No mention that for millenia we were mending our clothes, cleaning our houses, maintaining our food systems.

The reason this book sounds interesting is that maintenance is systematically undervalued, and basically in our human history pushed onto women and the lowest social classes. But the marketing material seems to highlight only the "sexy" stuff like weapons and vehicles. Where's the maintenance of washing our hands, washing our clothes, cleaning our streets?

There's this artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who was the "Artist in Residence" at NYC's department of sanitation in the 70s, and tried to use conceptual art as a way to highlight the work of the department and make "maintenance art" a thing. I'm interested in that kind of re-valuing of maintenance.

I bet this book will be interesting, I just don't like the framing as "Maintenance: Of Everything" since it's clearly not the whole story. Hopefully part 2 has a broader scope and mindset.

[0]: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-maintenance-race/

EDIT: discussion at that time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32196345

How and why do things fail? What are the cultures that lead to long-lasting products?

The undercurrent here is that Brand is behind the 10,000 year clock and has a vested interest in making things last a long time.

This book is an exploration of the world of things, how they break, and how people fix them. It's a huge effort, and Part One is right. He's been posting further work on Twitter from Part Two.

He included some sword fighting manuals that I sent that we think are the earliest written instruction guide.

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Edit: Sorry, my mind was preoccupied with buying the book instead of elaborating.

The interactive 3d render of the book and the gold gleam of the Kintusgi sent me absolutely gushing.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/01/19/341-...

I really enjoyed it. I'll probably get a copy of this. I loved the thermodynamics analogy in the start of the podcast, likening maintenance to the prevention of entropy, with all the energetic exchanges that entails. Though maintenance does take work, it's worth it. Stewart makes a compelling case for it.

Now, I think same about making programs by AI. They do sometimes in such a way that makes future maintenance harder.

The problem comes when price is not cheap.

I’m looking forward to reading this.