Reading

I read a lot of nonfiction, mostly about infrastructure, logistics, and the history of systems that most people never think about. I find this kind of thing genuinely fascinating, though I understand why other people don't. Below are some books I've especially liked, loosely organized by whatever felt right at the time.

This isn't a "best of" list or a curated recommendation engine. It's just stuff I've read and gotten something out of. I update it occasionally when I remember to.

Books I'd recommend to almost anyone

The Box by Marc Levinson — The history of the shipping container and how it reshaped the global economy. This sounds incredibly dry, and in some ways it is, but Levinson makes a compelling case that the standardized metal box is one of the most important inventions of the twentieth century. I've re-read this one more than once.
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner — About water politics and irrigation in the American West. Sprawling and a little polemical, but it fundamentally changed how I think about where I live and why the landscape looks the way it does. Essential reading if you're anywhere west of the hundredth meridian.
The Grid by Gretchen Bakke — A history and analysis of the American electrical grid. It covers the technical, political, and economic dimensions of how we generate and distribute power. I picked this up expecting to skim it and ended up reading the whole thing in a few days.
How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand — About how buildings change over time after they're built, and why some adapt well and others don't. Brand's idea of "low road" and "high road" buildings has stuck with me for years. There's a companion TV series too, which is worth watching.

More specific interests

Neither Snow nor Rain by Devin Leonard — A history of the United States Postal Service. It's one of those institutions that's so ubiquitous you forget it has a history at all. Leonard covers the whole arc, from colonial post riders to the current financial struggles. I found the middle chapters about the railroad era especially interesting.
The Big Necessity by Rose George — About sanitation and sewage systems worldwide. George writes about toilets, wastewater treatment, and the global sanitation crisis with a mix of humor and seriousness. Not a typical dinner-party recommendation, but genuinely important and well-written.
Concrete Planet by Robert Courland — A history of concrete from Roman times to the present. I didn't expect to find this as engaging as I did, but concrete is everywhere and its story touches on engineering, architecture, politics, and environmental concerns. The sections on Roman concrete and why it lasted so long are particularly good.
A general reference on municipal water treatment — I have an older edition of a textbook on water and wastewater treatment processes that I picked up at a library sale years ago. Not exactly a page-turner, but I've referred back to it more often than I expected. Understanding how tap water gets from a reservoir to your faucet is surprisingly involved. I won't name the specific edition since there are many similar books and most of them cover the same ground.

Miscellaneous

Tubes by Andrew Blum — About the physical infrastructure of the internet: undersea cables, data centers, exchange points. Blum actually travels to these places, which makes the book read more like a travelogue than a technical manual. Good for anyone who thinks the internet is just "the cloud."
A field guide to gravel and aggregate types — This is a niche one. I picked up a short reference guide at some point that catalogs different types of crushed stone, gravel, and aggregate used in road construction and drainage. It's not really a "book" in the traditional sense — more of a pamphlet with photos and specifications. But I've used it more than once when trying to figure out what kind of base material to use for a project.
Waiting for the Galactic Bus — Not nonfiction, and not really related to anything else on this list. This is a comic novel by Parke Godwin that a friend lent me years ago. It's strange and funny and I think about it more often than I should. Including it here because a reading list that's only infrastructure books makes me look like even more of a robot than I already do.
An old manual on radio tower maintenance — Someone gave me a decommissioned technical manual from the 1970s about maintaining AM radio broadcast towers. The procedures are beautifully specific and completely obsolete. I keep it on a shelf mostly as an artifact, but every once in a while I flip through it and appreciate how much care went into documenting something that barely exists anymore.

I'm always looking for more books in this general vein. If you've read something about the history of some boring-but-essential system and you think I'd like it, feel free to let me know.

— K. Vadala