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55
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
55/100Critics
17/100Scholars
93/100Author:
Vaclav Smil
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Date:
March 1, 2021
A Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba traces modernity's great civilization-changing shifts of population, agriculture, energy and economics, which have opened the door for a fifth transition: environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss and global warmingâwhich will determine the fate of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.
What The Reviewers Say
... a sweeping account of the deep material forces that have shaped the modern world.
Smil is a conjurer with numbers.
Readers will encounter the usual bad news about the environment...but Smil’s focus on facts and recent history situates him in a moderate position between catastrophists and those who tout a future of 'general and unstoppable improvement.' The author mostly (but not entirely) avoids turgid academic prose, and he isn’t shy about delivering information, often overwhelming readers with facts, statistics, and analyses. The result is an expert portrait of spectacular technical and economic advances that many in the 21st century enjoy but which exclude large segments of the population and are creating problems that may or may not be solvable. Ingenious, insightful, and disturbing..
