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Book Cover for: Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities, Vaclav Smil

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

Vaclav Smil

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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: MIT Press
  • Publish Date: Dec 8th, 2020
  • Pages: 664
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.70in - 5.60in - 1.50in - 1.85lb
  • EAN: 9780262539685
  • Categories: • Human Geography• Development - General• Life Sciences - Developmental Biology

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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.

More books by Vaclav Smil

Book Cover for: How to Feed the World: The History and Future of Food, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Energy and Civilization: A History, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Creating and Transforming the Twentieth Century, Revised and Expanded: Technical Innovations and Their Lasting Impact, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Size: How It Explains the World, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: El Tamaño de Las Cosas / Size: How It Explains the World, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Energy Transitions: History, Requirements, Prospects, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Natural Gas, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Prime Movers of Globalization: The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Should We Eat Meat?: Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory, Vaclav Smil
Book Cover for: Energy Transitions: Global and National Perspectives, Vaclav Smil

Praise for this book

"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)