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Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities (Mit Press) Paperback – December 8, 2020

by Vaclav Smil (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 530 ratings
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A systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

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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  1. Print length
    664 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    The MIT Press
  4. Publication date
    December 8, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1.38 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0262539683
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0262539685
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Editorial Reviews

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."

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 8, 2020
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Later prt.
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 664 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262539683
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262539685
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.87 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.38 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 530 ratings

About the author

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Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil

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Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He completed his graduate studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague and at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy) and the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He has been an invited speaker in more than 250 conferences and workshops in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia and has worked as a consultant for many US, EU and international institutions. His wife Eva is a physician and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.

Official Website: www.vaclavsmil.com

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Top reviews from the United States

  • QUINTANA
    5.0 out of 5 stars thanks !!
    Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2024
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    thanks!!
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  • Eric N. Smith
    4.0 out of 5 stars Why economic growth is a critical variable in understanding financial performance
    Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2019
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    Vaclav Smil retains his ability to separate the kernals of economic knowledge from the dross of pedestrian analysis.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars A nice mix of theory
    Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2021
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    In fact, this guy writes a lot of books in this style. There's an incredible amount of raw facts and there is still good support for the theory underneath whatever his topic is.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • TheHives
    3.0 out of 5 stars Great information, reads like a college lecture
    Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2020
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    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.
    41 people found this helpful
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  • Eddie Choo
    5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent exploration
    Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2020
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    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.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Chad M
    5.0 out of 5 stars Types of growth
    Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2021
    Types of exponential in nature, population, energy sources or systems, and the factors for growth are described very precisely and broadly in this book. One type of exponential growth which is now in plateau form would be carbon uptake by oceans and rainforests. New conservation and ecosystem design projects can try to turn the "S" to a new exponential growth phase, even though this will be expensive for some countries.
    New types of energy systems like pumped-hydro energy storage can achieve exponential growth in many of the mountainous countries. Solar thermal also has yet to see very strong exponential growth as most new solar is the photovoltaic type. Prof. Smil's books are very good for a precise understanding of our challenges.
    One person found this helpful
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  • E. N. Anderson
    4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of big numbers....
    Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2021
    If this book had come out when I was 12, I would have memorized it. It's got all the gee-whiz facts on the biggest, fastest, thickest, heaviest, strongest, whatever. I'm still adolescent enough to have devoured every page of it, but the adult in me kept asking "So what?" Outside of the occasional caution that we can't grow everything forever, there isn't much by way of conclusions here. It's a great reference but not a great read. Two points may give you some idea. First, he celebrates and duly gives all the numbers for the enormous explosion of information that's out there, but he doesn't bother to say that almost all of the increase is in things like online bank accounts, names of customers at shoe stores, and other stuff of no significance except to the immediate needs of the person posting it. Meanwhile, the countless bits of vitally important information about ecosystems and survival that were held among traditional and small-scale cultures are being lost at an appalling rate. In terms of actually useful information, we are losing far too much. Second, Smil duly celebrates on p. 499 “all machines and gadgets that make running a household incomparably less onerous that [sic, for than] a century ago”--well, OK, but as a field anthropologist I have spent seven years of my life without them, or without most of them, often without even electricity, let alone running water, and those were the happiest years of my life. The problem with modern machine civilization is that all those conveniences are always breaking down and needing expensive and difficult repairs. Yet I can't escape--I can't live now without a car, computers, etc. We have locked ourselves into a totally unsustainable world of "growth"--is it in the end like that other unchecked and uncontrolled growth known as cancer?
    8 people found this helpful
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  • s3ops
    5.0 out of 5 stars A narrative of dense, important information that leads to a spiritual conclusion.
    Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2020
    I have been reading Smil books for about a decade now, and 'Growth' attempts to stimulate thought in the educated reader (I think the book's information is accessible to a certain demographic) by presenting variants of the exponential and logarithmic mathematical functions of various biological and human systems. Smil foresees a battle of the biosphere versus the human material apparatus in the near future. I think intelligent discussion of the contents of this book should be a selection factor for policy makers internationally.
    8 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Martin Vesely
    5.0 out of 5 stars A unique account on growth
    Reviewed in Germany on June 12, 2022
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    The book is a unique account on growth. Generally, widely know growth studies focus on economic systems and population. However, Mr. Smil book covers also growth trajectories of living matter and human artifacts (e.g. cars, electric generators etc.). Besides description of many growth trajectories, also basics of growth forecasting and linked issues are discussed. Personally, I value this discussions as often fitting techniques are applied blindly, mainly in social sciences, which leads to misunderstanding of reality.

    As pointed out in other reviews in this book, sometimes, the text is reduced to listing numbers and dates. Although this can be boring for somebody, these parts are highly informative.

    It seems that the book does not have any particular target audience. In my opinion, it could be attractive for anybody dealing with forecasting, persons interested in history of technology, economists etc. Similarly to wide range of knowlede presented in the book, the audience is also wide.
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  • Dominika
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very good.
    Reviewed in Poland on February 16, 2023
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    Brilliant.
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  • Sumi Mishra
    5.0 out of 5 stars Product review not book
    Reviewed in India on August 18, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    I have heard great things about it, havent read yet. Quick delivery, great quality.
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  • Jonathan D.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Facts first, tentative opinion later
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    I wrongly assumed this book would describe a general, overarching pattern to growth in all areas. But Vaclav Smil doesn't do simple, he does facts.
    The enormous scope of this book is matched by its wealth of detail. So I recommend you sit in a comfy chair with a hot beverage and your favourite scientific calculator (optional), whilst reading this.
    And there's no shame in pausing every now and then, to stare into space with your mouth open.
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  • Natália Alves
    5.0 out of 5 stars Ótimo
    Reviewed in Brazil on May 15, 2022
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    Lindo
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