When you write a book that seeks to inform people about some issue or some event, how do you structure your book?

Question

Let's say I am writing a book about environment policy in China and how China managed to clean the air in its biggest cities drastically by going green, how would you structure a book like that? I feel like you can end up going aimlessly in a zigzag, because you might have to present some historical context in every chapter and keep giving historical context to everything you talk or mention, which may end up the book feeling really messy. How do you prevent that from happening?

An example of such a book would be:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China/oOpUDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

Answer 1

I think there are (at least) two ways to go about this.

You can either build up to the main topic:

1. Short introduction of the topic and why it is important
2. Context
3. Detailed description of the topic
4. Aftermath, implications
5. Summary

The other way is to focus on aspects of the topic, and build around those:

1. Short introduction of the topic and why it is important
2. Aspect 1 and its context
3. Aspect 2 and its context
4. Aspect n and its context
5. Summary

Both can get you there.