Humanity's progress can be viewed as a series of repairs and adjustments

“Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One

 

By Stewart Brand

 

Stripe, 308 pages, $40

 

“Stewart Brand's "Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One" begins with a drama that belies the book's seemingly humdrum topic. The author recounts the stories of three contestants in the 1968 Golden Globe around-the-world solo sailboat race. One was a former merchant marine whose wooden 32-foot ketch was barely adequate for a journey through the punishing Southern Ocean. "Make do and mend," was his motto.

 

Another competitor was a tech whiz who packed his plywood trimaran with electronic gizmos. A dreamy optimist, he set sail in a rush, hoping for the best. The third and most experienced racer sailed a purpose-built, steel-hulled boat, which he maintained with Zen-like discipline. He said he spent his days working "calmly at the odd jobs that make up my universe."

 

While the story will be familiar to sailors and others who've read the many books written about the race, Mr. Brand mines the competitors' harrowing experiences for deep lessons. Maintaining the technology that keeps us alive is more than a necessary chore, he wants us to understand. Constant upkeep and repair can be a kind of life-affirming ritual -- an appreciation for how even the best-made machines require the regular intercession of human skill and diligence.

 

Mr. Brand is a true American original. A Stanford graduate and U.S. Army basic-training instructor, he became a trendsetter in California's 1960s alternative culture, hanging out with Ken Kesey, designing multimedia happenings and, in 1968, launching the Whole Earth Catalog. Printed on cheap paper, the catalog was a mind-blowing compendium of do-it-yourself resources; whether readers wanted to raise goats, build a dome house or learn the computer language Basic, the catalog could point them in the right direction. (Three decades later, when I was editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, I kept a vintage copy of the Whole Earth Catalog in my office as an inspirational talisman.)

 

With its can-do spirit and jam-packed design, "Maintenance" contains more than a little of the Whole Earth Catalog's DNA. Almost every page features a photo, an illustration or an infographic, including a shot of Mr. Brand's hand-painted 1962 VW microbus, drawings from century-old repair manuals and a full-page guide to "twelve types of corrosion." Like the earlier catalog, it's a fun book to dip into at random.

 

Read front to back, "Maintenance" tells a coherent story of civilizational progress. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most machines were one-off creations, built by artisans to their own quirky specifications. But the technological age increasingly demanded standardization. Weapons led the way. If a cannonball jammed in an imprecisely bored barrel, the cannon might explode, killing its crew. On the other hand, if the parts of a flintlock rifle were interchangeable, a soldier could repair his weapon without the need for a gunsmith.

 

The manufacturing techniques that enabled this kind of precision gradually spread to other technologies. The same tools developed to bore cannon barrels were then used to improve steam engines. But standardization had its enemies, Mr. Brand notes, especially among gunsmiths and other artisans. During the French Revolution, the sansculottes rebelled against the new industrial techniques. "Craft was extolled; uniformity was deplored," Mr. Brand writes. France's technical progress was set back 50 years.

 

A century later, the early automobile industry faced a similar split. The original Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Mr. Brand writes, "was manufactured as a bespoke, unique vehicle, meticulously crafted by a dedicated team." Henry Ford's Model T, by contrast, was a crude but ingeniously simple machine. Ford made sure each part was manufactured to unvarying specifications, "perfect enough" that it could be installed by a moderately skilled worker on a moving assembly line. No fine-tuning needed.

 

Ford's embrace of standardization allowed his Model T to be built quickly and inexpensively. But standardization had another, paradoxical effect: It allowed nonexperts to repair their own vehicles and other equipment. A farmer who owned a Model T didn't need a forge or metal lathe to fix his engine; he could simply order a replacement part -- or cannibalize one from a wrecked car in a junkyard.

 

The French revolutionaries feared industrialization would depersonalize society by marginalizing skilled artisans. Mr. Brand shows that, instead, standardization democratized access to technology. With a few tools and a little gumption, anyone could learn to maintain and repair the machinery of daily life.

 

Of course, before putting a wrench to a piece of hardware, it helps to have the right information. Mr. Brand devotes many pages to the joys of how-to media, from Diderot's "Encyclopedie" to "Chilton's Motorcycle Troubleshooting Guide" to the countless instructional videos available on YouTube today.

 

Like many of his fellow free spirits, Mr. Brand became interested in tinkering while struggling to keep his VW van on the road. "Hippies were so dedicated to living in the moment that preventative maintenance was a difficult lesson for us," he writes. Fortunately, aspiring mechanics of that era could turn to John Muir's "How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive," the quirky, self-published guide whose "for the Compleat Idiot" subtitle launched a whole industry of DIY books for ordinary mortals.

 

Taking care of one's vehicle was more than a dreary obligation, Muir's book advised; it could be a route to self-discovery as well. Car maintenance "will not only change your relationship with your transportation," Muir wrote, "but will also change your relationship with yourself."

 

Mr. Brand agrees. Maintaining and fixing a balky machine teaches necessary humility. It helps us rise above what he calls the "neglect mind." We live in a culture that celebrates optimists -- the risk-taking startup founder, the rope-scorning big-wall climber. Mr. Brand believes we also need a dash of pessimism, the willingness to anticipate trouble and to work hard heading it off. "Maintainers are realists," he writes. Without them, our technological world grinds to a halt.

 

The importance of a maintenance culture becomes starkly visible in warfare. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Egypt and other Arab nations mounted a surprise attack on Israel and scored early victories. Within days, though, 80% of the Egyptian tanks broke down, with many simply abandoned. Military analysts, Mr. Brand tells us, later observed that Egyptian officers had a "disdain for manual labor" while also not trusting enlisted soldiers to attempt repairs. Israeli tank crews, by contrast, carried tools and were trained to do whatever it took to keep their tanks in the fight.

 

When Israeli forces counterattacked a few days later, some crews were driving Egyptian tanks, which Israeli troops had recovered from the battlefield, repaired and turned back against the enemy. "Maintenance prowess is core to rapid adaptivity under duress," Mr. Brand concludes. These wartime lessons are equally valuable in our private lives, in business and in society at large. Mr. Brand notes that our power grid is sorely in need of a stronger maintenance culture today.

 

"Maintenance" will engage students of technology, challenge business readers and inspire home tinkerers (who will be happy to learn that fixing gadgets is also a path to enlightenment). Fittingly, the book was initially published in installments online -- visible at books.worksinprogress.co -- as a kind of editorial DIY project. Mr. Brand tends to jump from topic to topic as he follows his passions. Some might find his digressions meandering; I found them delightful. Reflecting that quirky organization, the book ends on tangent rather than a big wrap-up. But that only raises expectations for Part Two.

 

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Mr. Meigs is the former editor of Popular Mechanics and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- Books: Fixing the Future --- Humanity's progress can be viewed as a series of repairs and adjustments. Meigs, James B.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 06 Dec 2025: C7.