Crisis Engineering Book

Our new book, Crisis Engineering, comes out April 7, 2026, everywhere books are sold, in paperback and audiobook versions.

The book includes case studies of Three Mile Island and our own experiences leading the rescue of HealthCare.gov, followed by a step-by-step toolkit for setting up a crisis engineering center, assembling your crisis team, and most importantly, how to emerge from the crisis not just successfully, but better off.

Pre-order individual copies on Bookshop.org or Amazon.com.

For bulk orders over 500 copies, please contact marina@layeraleph.com. We include a complimentary virtual webinar / book talk for your company at this level.

For bulk orders below 500 copies, please purchase on BulkBooks.

We have a limited number of early copies if you are interested in writing a review or considering a bulk sale for your organization; please be in touch (marina@layeraleph.com)!

We think the book is pretty useful, but you don't have to take our word for it:

"Crisis Engineering is the ultimate practical guide to leveraging a crisis to drive meaningful change. The authors—veterans and students of crises—provide both thoughtful analysis and compelling logic to provide a toolkit for making sense of what’s happening, understanding the systems involved, and reshaping them. A book I wish I’d had in difficult times.”―General Stanley McChrystal, US Army (Ret) & Co-Founder and CEO, McChrystal Group

"This is the book I wish every single boss I ever worked for had on their desk."―Dan Davies, Cyberneticist, author of The Unaccountability Machine and Back of Mind Substack

“Crisis Engineering is a field guide for anyone trying to make change with urgency, humility, and heart.”―Jen Pahlka, author of Recoding America and Former U.S. Deputy CTO

"This book gives you the tools to recognize a crisis, steer out of it, and maybe even make lasting change while you do. There's so much insight here: plenty of theory and useful new ways to think about crisis, but also practical tactics and detailed real world case studies. (And the nerdy sidebars are fascinating.)"―Tanya Reilly, principal engineer and author of The Staff Engineer’s Path

"Crisis Engineering is the essential guide to facing the complex breakdowns that characterize the 21st century. Read it, and come away wiser, stronger, and readier to understand and deal with whatever comes at you."―Tim O'Reilly, founder & CEO of O'Reilly Media, and author of WTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

"The central fact of our era is the rot and stagnation of our institutions. Many words have been spent documenting and lamenting this state. Crisis Engineering's contribution is a theory of how to get out of it, focused on the moments where brittle systems break. It's written by doers for doers."―Patrick McKenzie, host, Complex Systems

“Crisis Engineering is required reading for every decision maker in a complex company, non-profit, school, or government organization. This irresistible blend of theory, practice, and storytelling will help you avoid, reduce the duration and damage, and above all, take advantage of such unexpected, disorienting, and disruptive failures to make rapid system-wide improvements.”―Robert I. Sutton, Stanford Professor Emeritus and New York Times bestselling author of eight books including The No Asshole Rule, Good Boss, Bad Boss, and (with Huggy Rao) The Friction Project

"The world is never going to get less challenging, systems won’t get less complex, and the stakes won’t get lower. What’s more, the better you are at what you do – the more important and reliable your system is -- the worse it will be when a crisis hits. This book gives you the understanding and tools you need so that, when your organization is suddenly in the most demanding moments of its existence, you can act with confidence, resilience, and grace."―Deb Chachra, author of How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World

“Crisis Engineering brings together insightful definitions, useful (and gripping) anecdotes, and decades of collective experience in the hot seat to help you not only manage and recover from a crisis, but to come out better.”―Jason Fraser, Impact Strategy Advisor and Co-Author of Farther, Faster, and Far Less Drama