How the World Really Works [Paperback] Smil, Vaclav

A very detailed account of multifarious things that to seeuch upon our daily lives that we are completely oblivious of. Must read for all generations, a great source knowledge

For someone trying to het a sense of where we stand today as a civilization, this book offers the most clear picture.

This book is one of the essentials, it should be included in school curriculum.

Vaclav Smil is a realist.In this book, the author simplifies his previous research into seven easily digestible chapters that allows us to think about the future rationally while avoiding hyperbole and biasHighly recommended

This book along with ‘The rational optimist’ significantly increased my respect for fossil fuels. It is packed with data and interesting facts.

This book presents multiple facts on our history and where it'd take us in the coming years. "The pillars of modern civilization are cement, steel, plastic, and ammonia." - we'll need some groundbreaking inventions to get rid of these essentials that depend primarily on fossil fuels. We need to start something serious right now however, we'll not see the outcome anytime soon. Despite that, we need to start something soon.

The author presents a non biased and realistic explanation of how human civilization has come to function the way it does today.

Book is full of facts and figures about the past and present and provides insight to the improvements made in energy and , material consumption and building blocks of modern human civilisation. Remains very rational about the future.

This author gives in his book what are the four pillars of our civilisation: concrete, steel, ammonia and plastic. It explains in concrete terms the reasons for that. Also, it demonstrate these four pillars depend heavily on fossil fuel.The author also defines what is the ``environment'' on our planet and he explains in simple and concrete terms the root cause of the global warming.It should be noted that all facts and figures presented in the book are based on science. The author is very clear in declaring at the beginning of the book that he is NOT a guru that knows it all.

Excellent analyses based on basic facts and data. I strongly recommend this book to all types of readers.Congratulations Dr. Vaclav Smil

De los mejores autores.Este libro me hizo repensar sobre muchos temas como energía y alimentación

Often these days it seems there is much motivated talk of the great changes that humanity must undertake to adjust its behavior to influence the biosphere less without an appreciation of what that would truly take. The motivated talk is not without good intention, nor should it be dismissed because there are aspects which are unrealistic. Nonetheless to get a more honest picture of how great change can truly take place from a bottoms up perspective in our material world one should read How the World Really Works to appreciate the complexity we really face and the many bottlenecks which we have no current solutions to.Vaclev Smil does not limit himself to narrow questions in this book but instead tries to take a step back and appreciate the problems humanity faces and reflect on how to think about solution forming. The book is not optimistic or pessimistic and attempts to be a scientific realist about the current trajectory of the biosphere and what can be done given the material requirements of the population base. The author starts out by highlighting the fundamental differences between exponential growth in tech hardware and logistic like growth in most material economics, in particular the challenges to further productivity gains in energy production, agricultural yields while the roadmap for further density increases in semiconductors can be clearer and we should not get confused about the inability to advance material sciences the way miniaturization has done elsewhere. The author starts with the critical ingredient to human progress, energy. The main observations are around our inescapable need for fossil fuels. The statistics on alternative energy proportion going up while absolute demand for fossil fuels still increases or at best remains flat highlight how we have not solved our diversification problem and one can draw the quick inference that more wind power for Germany wont solve their gas deficiency. The reconstruction of our energy infrastructure to support a non fossil fuel world is currently a complete fantasy. The author moves onto food and highlights there crop yields over time and how real growth in yield was really catalyzed by the growth of fertilizers dependent on the Haber-Bosch process. This is another massive energy drain highlighting that mass food production and further scale is completely dependent on further energy availability and the yields from moving away from nitrogen fixing would require an order of magnitude more arable land for farming. The author then starts to focus on material production with the likes of steel, cement and overall structures required for human habitation and how these cannot be imagined away. He also discusses the growing risks humanity faces and touches about the pandemic. The author does not highlight the challenges of going to carbon neutral as an excuse to do nothing and is deeply worried about the irreversibility of our actions on the biosphere, as such the author discusses how we are affecting the environment and what the subsequent consequences are of those changes. In putting this together the author tries to give perspective that rising tides wont be the end of humanity nor will tech solve our material constraints and that we need to be completely realistic about the challenges we face so that we start to work on honest solutions to the problems we are causing.All in all How the World Really Works does a good job at framing the problems humanity faces in scale. This is not a political book on right or wrong but a calculated book on the quantities involved and the material constraints on inputs and outputs. This should very much be understood by those framing policies that are intended to be effective and the book is essential reading for those who want to understand this issues better. Both informative and interesting, definitely a good book to gain the proper context to think about what needs to be done and how it can be done.

It should be mandatory to read in secondary school or college