yeah I've seen it before too and it's so frustrating! I'm quite sure I also don't have the knack, but I wish these kinds of authors would try a different approach to writing the thing they want to write, instead of doing this thing badly.

I loved how MacFarlane did it in Underland, where each chapter was a deep dive into a separate thing along one theme, and they built up together to say something greater than the sum of its parts, without having to try to make awkward transitions from one thing to the next. I think this would ALSO be hard to do, but in a different way. But it's evidence there's more than one way to write a work of popular nonfiction! More experimentation in the form, please!