Book writing gone wrong and need advice to clean it up

Sitting around me and some others got a terrible idea for me to put what is my noodle into written format. Mainly my research focus has been on inclusive pedagogical structures for architectural education for rural and underserved communities such as neurodivergent students, “inter” city, etc. Its part historical reference, part wtf went wrong, and part idea layout for the “dream”. Now the issue is its getting clunky with citation after freaking citation in the paragraphs so the thought was to put all that insanity into the footer but it made it almost worse, and with more than 100+ readings done its only gaining rabbit hole status faster. (Seriouly dont fall into history traps, you’ll never come out….) but anyhow what is the advice…. and ya Purdue site is not helpful since its an academic but not academic piece, as in im not writing it for a journal or that type of stuff.