The engineer in me completely agrees with you, but I have a feeling the non-fiction books are geared to be as much entertainment as they are enlightening. If you want to forgo the former, look for case studies and mishap investigations instead. The government oversight agencies have a lot available online. They are more dry but leave out the prosaic fluff

E.g., https://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html