He's not in this to sell books. Stewart is investigating a way of life, and a means of keeping things working a long time. And he's documenting it thoroughly.
I was fortunate to read a preprint of Brand's latest. It's magnificent.
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.
We loved writing them, too! Traffic to the photo teardowns dropped and has been replaced by video. If you can help us figure out how to get people to pay attention to long-form articles again, we're all ears!