largeicedtea's review
informative
medium-paced
3.25
Deb Chachra is a brilliant thinker and she excels at breaking down complicated concepts for laypeople like me who have zero background in STEM. I appreciate that she avoids getting wonky by tying her larger points to the real life infrastructure all around us that we may casually observe but take little note of. I had my mind blown at several points during this book, which is more than I can say for the nonfiction I tend to gravitate toward.
That said, I was hoping for more organized and delineated content. Sure, this book is conversational so as not to put off your average reader, but I felt like we were skipping too quickly from idea to idea, from sky to land to sea, from energy to superstructures to transportation. Chachra points out several times that all infrastructure enmeshed and dependent upon other systems, but my brain just wasn't built to flit between a dozen different concepts. I do enjoy TED Talks but I don't know that I'm capable of reading a 320-page TED Talk.
I greatly admire the author but perhaps this wasn't the book for me.
That said, I was hoping for more organized and delineated content. Sure, this book is conversational so as not to put off your average reader, but I felt like we were skipping too quickly from idea to idea, from sky to land to sea, from energy to superstructures to transportation. Chachra points out several times that all infrastructure enmeshed and dependent upon other systems, but my brain just wasn't built to flit between a dozen different concepts. I do enjoy TED Talks but I don't know that I'm capable of reading a 320-page TED Talk.
I greatly admire the author but perhaps this wasn't the book for me.
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