My thinking is that many of the kinds of engineering failure stories you refer to are about the failure, itself, or the victims of the failure (Therac-25, for example), but not often primarily about a single individual's life of failure (or even a single individual's sole role in a failure).

They might also be about the engineering teams/groups involved (Challenger explosion) and sometimes about a specific engineer (Allan McDonald).

I'd argue that all of these have immense value. The Allan McDonald story can be seen as both success/failure (failure to stop the launch, success for being right and standing firm on that belief). And while "pure failure biographies" related to engineering failures probably exist, I was able to come up with a number of examples while writing this comment for every other form of engineering failure that doesn't qualify, but couldn't think of a good example that does which I have seen/read. Many on business failures that focus on a CEO (and sometimes those CEOs are the engineer, but, again, nothing that wouldn't require reaching out to Google).

Thinking about it -- I'm glad about that. The kinds of "excellent essays and books about engineering failures" that you mention are the kinds of things I love to read. I wish there were more of them.

What I hate when I'm reading these things is the colorful, biography-like nonsense that major publications (and self-important "journalists") like to toss into stories: "I pulled up to the diner at 8:00 PM, the paint on the door was clearly done in another era; when this small part of (nowhereville) was an up-and-coming metropolis, and the place that Bob Thomas grew up and learned that hard work and determination can do anything. The "O" in the "Open" sign had failed long ago, leaving only "pen". It was a sign from the universe as I was here to write about the startup-to-empire-to-bankrupcy of ePens Custom Pens. Though I was a half-hour early, Bob was waiting for me, his hair and beard flowing together not knowing where one begins and the other ends. One can't help but being reminded of the race condition that would ultimately lead to the unraveling of the machine he'd spent his life building".

No thanks. Tell me what went wrong. Tell me what led up to the failure -- include technical details and process/technical/decision-making that led to the failure. I don't know the engineer and my interest is in the idea/technology, not the person. And I care even less about the guy writing about the person... :)