Stewart Brand makes a persuasive case that maintenance—the unglamorous work of keeping what we own going—is among the most creative and consequential acts available to any of us. It is a book that reframes the ordinary chores of ownership as a discipline worth mastering, and the tools and objects in one's life as relationships worth tending.

The first in a planned multi-volume work, Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One opens with the 1968 Golden Globe solo sailboat race as a study in maintenance under life-or-death conditions, then ranges through the world of fixers and obsessives—motorcycle maintainers, the rival philosophies that shaped the auto industry, the evolution of precision manufacturing, military sustainment, and the never-ending battle against corrosion. Brand's argument is that taking responsibility for the care of something, whether a motorcycle, a monument, or a planet, can be a radical act.

By Stewart Brand (creator of the Whole Earth Catalog), published January 2026 by Stripe Press. 308 pages, hardcover, illustrated.