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Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities Paperback – 8 December 2020

by Vaclav Smil (Author)

156 ratings

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Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations. Smil takes readers from bacterial invasions through animal metabolisms to megacities and the global economy. He begins with organisms whose mature sizes range from microscopic to enormous, looking at disease-causing microbes, the cultivation of staple crops, and human growth from infancy to adulthood. He examines the growth of energy conversions and man-made objects that enable economic activities-developments that have been essential to civilization. Finally, he looks at growth in complex systems, beginning with the growth of human populations and proceeding to the growth of cities. He considers the challenges of tracing the growth of empires and civilizations, explaining that we can chart the growth of organisms across individual and evolutionary time, but that the progress of societies and economies, not so linear, encompasses both decline and renewal. The trajectory of modern civilization, driven by competing imperatives of material growth and biospheric limits, Smil tells us, remains uncertain.

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Product details

Language : English
Paperback : 664 pages
ISBN-10 : 0262539683
ISBN-13 : 978-0262539685

Best Sellers Rank: 51,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 63 in Social Science Human Geography
- 95 in Environmentalism
- 110 in Environmental Economics

Customer reviews:
156 ratings

Product description

Review

Vaclav Smil does for the history of energy what Thomas Piketty did for the history of inequality. And his findings are just as uncomfortable. - Rutger Bregman, historian and author of Utopia for Realists (2017) and Humankind (2020)

About the Author

Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of forty books, including Energy and Civilization, published by the MIT Press. In 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2013 Bill Gates wrote on his website that "there is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil."

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Amazon.com: 10 reviews

Great information, reads like a college lecture

12 May 2020 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

I've only read the preface and about two chapters so far. This book is fairly dense. I've found it rewarding so far, but I knocked off two stars because the writing is extremely complicated and almost pretentious for what it's trying to convey.

At times, entire pages read like a rambling lecture from one of your college elective classes. There are sprinkles of interesting facts and observations with a huge number of citations, but the author almost comes across as a drunk fool. He doesn't write with a purpose. I found myself reading entire pages of rather dense material, where a single sentence goes on and on for at least 4 or more lines. There are many passages where there are no real "takeaways". There are sentences that could be ripped apart or stripped out entirely and the main idea explained in six or seven words without losing detail.

I don't want to accuse the author of anything, and I'll admit he excessively provides citations. But I gotta say – this book could be half its size if the author cut the bullshit. The complex writing is a delusion of grandeur. The reader is not better off by wasting time on these puzzles.

16 people found this helpful

Eddie Choo

An excellent exploration

13 February 2020 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Smil looks again at the extent of growth at all scales of life. An excellent summary if what growth entails and what it means. Does the growth of non-organic institutions resemble organic biological growth. Smil thinks so.

6 people found this helpful

Mark Weaver

Great history but no prize at the end

2 February 2021 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Positives: Obviously Smil is brilliant. Growth might be one of the best wide-scope history books published.
Negatives: The textbook style rambles on and on for 500+ pages to a disappointing conclusion. Smil fails to include the importance or impact of human nature. I found his solution for obesity on page 171 to be just plain wrong based on the data we have over the past 10 years, which leads me question how much of what I read is objective and how much is bias. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that we need to care for our air, water, and bodies, but how is the question. He doesn’t mention garbage or food additives as potential issues, like he does water and air. Unless, you love numbers and how they tie to history, this book will be difficult to finish, or at least you’ll question why you should finish it.

One person found this helpful

Andrew Smith

A list of growth rates

18 January 2021 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

I gave up pretty early on this book. To be fair to the author, I'm not sure what I expected.

It's academic prose. The author has an encyclopedic grasp of growth rates and lists every single one of them, but doesn't often draw insights from them or offer interesting conclusions. He defines growth very broadly. Anything that changes in a way that can be measured and is increasing in count. Heart surgeries performed since the year 0. Is that growth? Yes. Is that raw number with noo added analysis or parallels drawn interesting? I found it dry.

By defining growth broadly and then listing "things that changed", the discussion becomes kind of boring and finding areas of interest or insight is an exercise left up to the reader.

If you enjoy reading a list of statements about the rate something changed over a period of time, you will enjoy reading the first few sections of this book, which is as far as I got.

One person found this helpful

Eric N. Smith

Why economic growth is a critical variable in understanding financial performance

26 December 2019 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

Vaclav Smil retains his ability to separate the kernals of economic knowledge from the dross of pedestrian analysis.

5 people found this helpful

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