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Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made
From one of the world's leading experts on the history of energy, a rigorous examination of the transitions that structure our modern world--and the environmental reckoning that will mark its success or failure.
What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization--in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics--which have transformed the way we live.
Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments.
Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition--environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming--will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.
What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization--in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics--which have transformed the way we live.
Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments.
Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition--environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming--will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published March 1, 2021
327 people are currently reading
3019 people want to read
About the author
Vaclav Smil
81 books4,340 followersVaclav Smil is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst whose work spans energy, environment, food, population, economics, history, and public policy. Educated at Charles University in Prague and later at Pennsylvania State University, where he earned his Ph.D. in geography, Smil emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the United States in 1969 following the Soviet invasion, before beginning his long academic career at the University of Manitoba in 1972. Over the decades he established himself as a leading voice on global energy systems, environmental change, and economic development, with particular attention to China. Smil has consistently argued that transitions to renewable energy will be gradual rather than rapid, emphasizing the persistence of coal, oil, and natural gas and highlighting the difficulties of decarbonizing critical industries such as steel, cement, ammonia, and plastics. He has also been skeptical of indefinite economic growth, suggesting that human consumption could be sustained at much lower levels of material and energy use. Widely admired for his clear, data-driven analyses, Smil counts Bill Gates among his readers, while colleagues have praised his rigor and independence. Known for his reclusiveness and preference for letting his books speak for him, he has nonetheless lectured extensively worldwide and consulted for major institutions. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada, Smil remains a highly influential public intellectual.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
December 27, 2021
Summary: Way better written then the last one from Smil. Still a bit guilty of reading me a chart (ouch ouch). Overall I like, but I wish he did a bit more on making harder stands on the "why" of his stuff. There's so much more that could be done here.
Smil is great and I'm finally getting around to his stuff. As a later book, it's a bit clearer where he's going with it. And the only other author I know with as many citations is Bill Bryson. But BB keeps it tighter by ring fencing his area of discussion and he does a better job of coming to more pointed conclusions. I dig Smil for the volume of research and what he's undertaking nonetheless, so this time 5 stars.
His deal is he's trying to describe big transitions. But he's doing it primarily by using "what." He could use a little more "how" and "Why", which are present, but secondary. If he did those two things, I'd love him like I love Bill Bryson.
p. 15 "My interest is, once again, historical. My goals are to ascertain diverse origins, complicated processes, synergistic and antagonistic interactions, and complex outcomes of seveal distinct yet highly interdependent transitions that have always entailed combinations of quantitative and qualitative shifts." This is his deal. At times when you're like... what is he on about, you have to keep this in your head, cause boy does that guy meander like a rock star.... as evidenced by the fact that he has to restate it on
p. 25 "The book's raison d'etre is to offer a systematic inquiry into how such epochal transitions took place, to describe in detail the premodern norms (modal or typical growth rates, common uses and capabilities, aggregates and specific achievements), to follow numerous transition trajectories (ranging from those unfolding across centuries to those accomplished within a single generation) and to outline eventual outcomes now prevailing in societies that have undergone those multifaceted epochal transitions.
Largely speaking he gets to these things but he doesn't get it from "why" this tells you he's gonna be on about what. I just personally think that's not ideal (it's harder to follow, unless you've got your own why and how) and it's also a bit harder to establish if he's got it right unless you're a bit broader in your knowledge base.... I'll describe further below. Realize that this is still 1 chapter of intro that is like 50 pages long.... not normal, btw.
p. 32 - "As a result, modern high-energy societies have been able to displace animate labor by machines, to revolutionize food production, and to expand industrial output even as they have diverted increasing shares of their ample energy supply (converted with improving efficiencies into nonessential discretionary uses, resulting in unprecedented quality of life, in high levels of personal mobility and communication ability, and in rapidly enlarged access to information).
p. 51 "A visitor who knows nothing about China may feel that the country is technically ahead of the United States when he steps out of a maglev train that brought him from the airport to Shanghai's Longyang station. But the German-made train is the world's only and a highly subsidized showpiece of its kind, and the traveler would get very different impressions of China if he could see daily lives of peasants in rural Guangxi or coal miners in Shanxi. And if the new china is not hte world's most unequal modern society, then it surely is among the top three contenders for this unenviable ranking." Ok, so Number 1, hater. The same could be said of any country with a large landmass, not the least of which is the United States. Number 2, he is kinda missing the point that within China there is all of the things he's trying to talk about in a microcosm. But I'm not gonna take a star out for this, as too many writers are weak on their thought process of Asia in general and the use of it to appreciate where their thought experiments are going.
p. 72 - "Sustained reduction of fertility became a matter of conscious choices as families, weighing their socioeconomic conditions and their children's prospects, made rational calculations to limit their size." Very mixed feelings on this one. It's one of the few places where I think he should have pulled up shorter on his conclusion to make a call on what's happening. This is particularly true in the US where education has an inverse relationship to number of children. I think if he'd done just a touch more here, he would see that something else more complex might be going on.
p. 78 "No society could endure the perpetuation of falling mortalities and high fertilities for many generations: such a combination would bring so many hardships (ranging from overcrowding and land fragmentation to unemployment and pollution) that before too long a new approximate equilibrium must be restored and that becomes possible only through reduced fertility." Yes... and also it's the less interesting point. Local temporal minima and maxima are hardly as interesting as the overall population growth and how it came to pass both geographically and globally. I think for his long term goal of he might prefer to go down that road. There is a bunch more in this section, so it's not precisely where he's going with it, but you can tell it forms a bit of the trajectory of how he's thinking here.
p. 81 - He talks about how in times past, more children meant you had more people to take care of you as you got old.
p. 108 (adding this for a friends who asked me to read so I can find it later) Top paragraph, he talks about different cities with different populations. This is where you can tell where his data weakens a bit. He is missing at least two major urbanization case studies worth mentioning, i.e. Mexico (around 1500s I think) and also Cambodia around the time Siem Reap was built. I think he might enjoy adding in these two case studies for several areas of his book. But He's strong in China (domestic) ... unfortunately weak on international China pre-1900. Otherwise, it's an intriguing point that I think isn't discussed enough, the rise and fall of large populous cities and what it entails. It's certainly relevant for how he's thinking about these transitions temporally.
p. 114 2016 - "By 2016 just over 80% of all Chinese urban residents were registered to live in their cities, but 220 million people (more than all the people in Brazil, the world's 5th most populous nation) living there were still registered in rural areas. These workers, often called the floating population, have built the new cities, they provide most of the labor for their manufacturing enterprises, and they run many urban services - and yet they have been treated as second-class citizens (Zhao et al. 2018). The reason has been the continuation of the houshold registration system (hukou) that was set up in 1958 and that ties families and individuals to their places of birth.
So obviously the Chinese gov would cite slavery in the US as being ever so slightly worse (duration and treatment) than what is being done to the rural population of China. I think though that's not the point, but I wish he would have just thought it through b/c I think he gets a slightly off conclusion on how to look at/interpret the numbers and subsequent conclusions.
p. 124 - he talks about mega cities being a prob due to natural disaster. This is coming from the large reinsurers. But does provide the counter point that "... some urbanization enthusiasts applaud this trend, claiming that as cities get bigger they get healthier and greener and make the inhabitants richer, smarter, and happier...." He's really not a fan of cities. He's laid it out but I'm not totally convinced either way. I think instead, he might be missing the mechanism of concept city and what it might imply in the future given the benefits and failures. But that's not relevant persay because he doesn't have that as a goal of the book.
p. 153 - 'For those who never baked their own bread or studied the art of baking: any bread containing mostly oats, barley or rye (as breads of poor people often did) will be a heavy lump as those cereals lack wheat's gluten and makes leaven breads possible). " thx Smil. I love baking and I have a lot of gluten free friends.
p. 158 - "Substantial decline in the consumption of leguminous grains has been a universal phenomenon with only a few notable exceptions." It's a little hard to tell b/c in this chapter he does a lot of that really annoying thing he does in other books where he's essentially reading you charts and keeping his paragraphs divided in a way where his point is really far from the words. But I think his point is that these plants are helpful to the soil and let you ultimately use less fertilizer. I think this whole damned chapter could have been organized a bit better surrounding the idea... eat this and we'll need less fertilizer, but currently we eat this and it's a problem.....
p. 208 - "In 1950 crude oil provided less than half of the energy supplied by coal; by 1960 its shipments were equal to mroe than 70% of worldwide coal consumption, and the tipping point, when oil began supplying globally more energy than coal, came, according to the UN statistics in 1967." I didn't know these dates on the history. Cool.
p. 210 he talks about the role of nat gas and lng in taking the place of oil. It's not going to be renewables in the near future. That jibes with all of the companies (both utilities and energy producers). If he and the world ends up being wrong it will just be a function of innovation that happens in the next 5-10 years. always a possiblity.
p. 230 - He cites himself. Cute. I hope one day I can cite myself.
p. 237 - "The process of electrification took 26 years (1882 - 1908) to connect 10% of all dwellings to the grid, 43 years to get to 50%(in 1925), 67 years to 90% 91953) and 75 years to 99%. Complete transition to electric lighting in the United States thus took about three-quarters of a century (1882-1956)." Cool. He then uses that as a baseline to compare across diff countries what and how it has come to pass. Also very cool.
p. 251, also he's citing himself here. but it's cool and jibes with what I see in other spots. The idea is that coal steam liners are significantly less efficient than hydrogen ones to the tune of 700% more efficient.
p. 352 - "The future of cities (and the extent of impervious areas) is linked more closely to population than to economic growth." yes and.... I'm not sure if his point is clear here on what he ultimately thinks is going on cause neither is causal.
p. 355 - "Deforestation has thus ended in many affluent countries, although in some of them the return of forest is not due to a complete cessation of cutting, but to faster rates of reforestation." In general parts of this are a bit hard for me, b/c it seems to not consider the exportation of deforestation. Similarly, he cites deforestation slow downs in asia and africa, but the issue is that there is less forest now given a longer history of deforestation, not that there isn't a desire to cut it down less vs. latin america. so I'm not sure what the point is here.
p. 364 - he goes through what the transformation of natural land is going to do (mining, rural dev, roads, etc). This would have been better on a chart and then just talk about the conclusions.
p. 373 He talks about fishing and industrial fishing. Still a lot more I think can be done here.
p. 377 - He links light exposure to a host of disease. This is pretty fascinating. Need to follow-up as it doesn't come up nearly as much in all the books I read on sleep (see list).
p. 387 - "Plastics incorporated into durable products... can be used for decades; plastics for packaging are often discarded immediately after a single brief use." Great point and also why i am so thrilled we've moved the war on plastics to a war on "single use plastics." He could have gone deeper here, cause I know from his previous book he def has the research to make a more conclusive point.
p. 391 - He really backed off of Phosphorous from his last book ... the idea it's not a depletion thing. Great. In general, in this entire section, would be cool for him to do more of a heat map of the big 3 and also talk about the acidity levels of various land masses. He's prob got that somewhere given how this reads. But it's not in the appendix. (p. 393)
p. 409 He talks about the massive increase in energy and food consumption in the modern era.
p. 418 Regarding all the haters that wrote early century that we were doomed to run out of food and energy "These forecasts were absolute failures: the realities have shifted in the opposite direction as hundreds of millions of people moved from uncertain subsistence to a comfortable food supply." Then he goes through the stats across the world.
p. 432 - Everyone picks on China. It's so weird. "An what has China done recently? In order to bring a modicum of prosperity to its nearly 1.4 billion people, in the 25 years between 1990 and 2015, China had increased its consumption of total energy more than 4 fold." Then he goes through it. but think about what that level is vs the US who is about the same size in landmass but does it for a lot less peeps. Why isn't that the thing he chooses to focus on and demonstrate that what we need to do is figure out how to do it for even less of a charge. It's like China used a coupon vs the West. So can we get a bigger coupon? Just saying... seems like a more interesting point IMO.
p. 458 - "Even in the United States, with its abundance of farmland and its ability to divert about 40% of corn from animal feed, the annual output of ethanol is equivalent to only 10% of gasoline consumption." I didn't know those numbers. Thanks Smil.
p. 478 - he points out the futility of the Paris agreements. Even if it all works out we're still going to clock in at a 50% level above 2018. It's kinda the obvious irony of it. and super true and misunderstood. IT's going to take a different innovation to clean it all up.
Overall, I did like the book. Sorry if I had a few harsh comments.
Smil is great and I'm finally getting around to his stuff. As a later book, it's a bit clearer where he's going with it. And the only other author I know with as many citations is Bill Bryson. But BB keeps it tighter by ring fencing his area of discussion and he does a better job of coming to more pointed conclusions. I dig Smil for the volume of research and what he's undertaking nonetheless, so this time 5 stars.
His deal is he's trying to describe big transitions. But he's doing it primarily by using "what." He could use a little more "how" and "Why", which are present, but secondary. If he did those two things, I'd love him like I love Bill Bryson.
p. 15 "My interest is, once again, historical. My goals are to ascertain diverse origins, complicated processes, synergistic and antagonistic interactions, and complex outcomes of seveal distinct yet highly interdependent transitions that have always entailed combinations of quantitative and qualitative shifts." This is his deal. At times when you're like... what is he on about, you have to keep this in your head, cause boy does that guy meander like a rock star.... as evidenced by the fact that he has to restate it on
p. 25 "The book's raison d'etre is to offer a systematic inquiry into how such epochal transitions took place, to describe in detail the premodern norms (modal or typical growth rates, common uses and capabilities, aggregates and specific achievements), to follow numerous transition trajectories (ranging from those unfolding across centuries to those accomplished within a single generation) and to outline eventual outcomes now prevailing in societies that have undergone those multifaceted epochal transitions.
Largely speaking he gets to these things but he doesn't get it from "why" this tells you he's gonna be on about what. I just personally think that's not ideal (it's harder to follow, unless you've got your own why and how) and it's also a bit harder to establish if he's got it right unless you're a bit broader in your knowledge base.... I'll describe further below. Realize that this is still 1 chapter of intro that is like 50 pages long.... not normal, btw.
p. 32 - "As a result, modern high-energy societies have been able to displace animate labor by machines, to revolutionize food production, and to expand industrial output even as they have diverted increasing shares of their ample energy supply (converted with improving efficiencies into nonessential discretionary uses, resulting in unprecedented quality of life, in high levels of personal mobility and communication ability, and in rapidly enlarged access to information).
p. 51 "A visitor who knows nothing about China may feel that the country is technically ahead of the United States when he steps out of a maglev train that brought him from the airport to Shanghai's Longyang station. But the German-made train is the world's only and a highly subsidized showpiece of its kind, and the traveler would get very different impressions of China if he could see daily lives of peasants in rural Guangxi or coal miners in Shanxi. And if the new china is not hte world's most unequal modern society, then it surely is among the top three contenders for this unenviable ranking." Ok, so Number 1, hater. The same could be said of any country with a large landmass, not the least of which is the United States. Number 2, he is kinda missing the point that within China there is all of the things he's trying to talk about in a microcosm. But I'm not gonna take a star out for this, as too many writers are weak on their thought process of Asia in general and the use of it to appreciate where their thought experiments are going.
p. 72 - "Sustained reduction of fertility became a matter of conscious choices as families, weighing their socioeconomic conditions and their children's prospects, made rational calculations to limit their size." Very mixed feelings on this one. It's one of the few places where I think he should have pulled up shorter on his conclusion to make a call on what's happening. This is particularly true in the US where education has an inverse relationship to number of children. I think if he'd done just a touch more here, he would see that something else more complex might be going on.
p. 78 "No society could endure the perpetuation of falling mortalities and high fertilities for many generations: such a combination would bring so many hardships (ranging from overcrowding and land fragmentation to unemployment and pollution) that before too long a new approximate equilibrium must be restored and that becomes possible only through reduced fertility." Yes... and also it's the less interesting point. Local temporal minima and maxima are hardly as interesting as the overall population growth and how it came to pass both geographically and globally. I think for his long term goal of he might prefer to go down that road. There is a bunch more in this section, so it's not precisely where he's going with it, but you can tell it forms a bit of the trajectory of how he's thinking here.
p. 81 - He talks about how in times past, more children meant you had more people to take care of you as you got old.
p. 108 (adding this for a friends who asked me to read so I can find it later) Top paragraph, he talks about different cities with different populations. This is where you can tell where his data weakens a bit. He is missing at least two major urbanization case studies worth mentioning, i.e. Mexico (around 1500s I think) and also Cambodia around the time Siem Reap was built. I think he might enjoy adding in these two case studies for several areas of his book. But He's strong in China (domestic) ... unfortunately weak on international China pre-1900. Otherwise, it's an intriguing point that I think isn't discussed enough, the rise and fall of large populous cities and what it entails. It's certainly relevant for how he's thinking about these transitions temporally.
p. 114 2016 - "By 2016 just over 80% of all Chinese urban residents were registered to live in their cities, but 220 million people (more than all the people in Brazil, the world's 5th most populous nation) living there were still registered in rural areas. These workers, often called the floating population, have built the new cities, they provide most of the labor for their manufacturing enterprises, and they run many urban services - and yet they have been treated as second-class citizens (Zhao et al. 2018). The reason has been the continuation of the houshold registration system (hukou) that was set up in 1958 and that ties families and individuals to their places of birth.
So obviously the Chinese gov would cite slavery in the US as being ever so slightly worse (duration and treatment) than what is being done to the rural population of China. I think though that's not the point, but I wish he would have just thought it through b/c I think he gets a slightly off conclusion on how to look at/interpret the numbers and subsequent conclusions.
p. 124 - he talks about mega cities being a prob due to natural disaster. This is coming from the large reinsurers. But does provide the counter point that "... some urbanization enthusiasts applaud this trend, claiming that as cities get bigger they get healthier and greener and make the inhabitants richer, smarter, and happier...." He's really not a fan of cities. He's laid it out but I'm not totally convinced either way. I think instead, he might be missing the mechanism of concept city and what it might imply in the future given the benefits and failures. But that's not relevant persay because he doesn't have that as a goal of the book.
p. 153 - 'For those who never baked their own bread or studied the art of baking: any bread containing mostly oats, barley or rye (as breads of poor people often did) will be a heavy lump as those cereals lack wheat's gluten and makes leaven breads possible). " thx Smil. I love baking and I have a lot of gluten free friends.
p. 158 - "Substantial decline in the consumption of leguminous grains has been a universal phenomenon with only a few notable exceptions." It's a little hard to tell b/c in this chapter he does a lot of that really annoying thing he does in other books where he's essentially reading you charts and keeping his paragraphs divided in a way where his point is really far from the words. But I think his point is that these plants are helpful to the soil and let you ultimately use less fertilizer. I think this whole damned chapter could have been organized a bit better surrounding the idea... eat this and we'll need less fertilizer, but currently we eat this and it's a problem.....
p. 208 - "In 1950 crude oil provided less than half of the energy supplied by coal; by 1960 its shipments were equal to mroe than 70% of worldwide coal consumption, and the tipping point, when oil began supplying globally more energy than coal, came, according to the UN statistics in 1967." I didn't know these dates on the history. Cool.
p. 210 he talks about the role of nat gas and lng in taking the place of oil. It's not going to be renewables in the near future. That jibes with all of the companies (both utilities and energy producers). If he and the world ends up being wrong it will just be a function of innovation that happens in the next 5-10 years. always a possiblity.
p. 230 - He cites himself. Cute. I hope one day I can cite myself.
p. 237 - "The process of electrification took 26 years (1882 - 1908) to connect 10% of all dwellings to the grid, 43 years to get to 50%(in 1925), 67 years to 90% 91953) and 75 years to 99%. Complete transition to electric lighting in the United States thus took about three-quarters of a century (1882-1956)." Cool. He then uses that as a baseline to compare across diff countries what and how it has come to pass. Also very cool.
p. 251, also he's citing himself here. but it's cool and jibes with what I see in other spots. The idea is that coal steam liners are significantly less efficient than hydrogen ones to the tune of 700% more efficient.
p. 352 - "The future of cities (and the extent of impervious areas) is linked more closely to population than to economic growth." yes and.... I'm not sure if his point is clear here on what he ultimately thinks is going on cause neither is causal.
p. 355 - "Deforestation has thus ended in many affluent countries, although in some of them the return of forest is not due to a complete cessation of cutting, but to faster rates of reforestation." In general parts of this are a bit hard for me, b/c it seems to not consider the exportation of deforestation. Similarly, he cites deforestation slow downs in asia and africa, but the issue is that there is less forest now given a longer history of deforestation, not that there isn't a desire to cut it down less vs. latin america. so I'm not sure what the point is here.
p. 364 - he goes through what the transformation of natural land is going to do (mining, rural dev, roads, etc). This would have been better on a chart and then just talk about the conclusions.
p. 373 He talks about fishing and industrial fishing. Still a lot more I think can be done here.
p. 377 - He links light exposure to a host of disease. This is pretty fascinating. Need to follow-up as it doesn't come up nearly as much in all the books I read on sleep (see list).
p. 387 - "Plastics incorporated into durable products... can be used for decades; plastics for packaging are often discarded immediately after a single brief use." Great point and also why i am so thrilled we've moved the war on plastics to a war on "single use plastics." He could have gone deeper here, cause I know from his previous book he def has the research to make a more conclusive point.
p. 391 - He really backed off of Phosphorous from his last book ... the idea it's not a depletion thing. Great. In general, in this entire section, would be cool for him to do more of a heat map of the big 3 and also talk about the acidity levels of various land masses. He's prob got that somewhere given how this reads. But it's not in the appendix. (p. 393)
p. 409 He talks about the massive increase in energy and food consumption in the modern era.
p. 418 Regarding all the haters that wrote early century that we were doomed to run out of food and energy "These forecasts were absolute failures: the realities have shifted in the opposite direction as hundreds of millions of people moved from uncertain subsistence to a comfortable food supply." Then he goes through the stats across the world.
p. 432 - Everyone picks on China. It's so weird. "An what has China done recently? In order to bring a modicum of prosperity to its nearly 1.4 billion people, in the 25 years between 1990 and 2015, China had increased its consumption of total energy more than 4 fold." Then he goes through it. but think about what that level is vs the US who is about the same size in landmass but does it for a lot less peeps. Why isn't that the thing he chooses to focus on and demonstrate that what we need to do is figure out how to do it for even less of a charge. It's like China used a coupon vs the West. So can we get a bigger coupon? Just saying... seems like a more interesting point IMO.
p. 458 - "Even in the United States, with its abundance of farmland and its ability to divert about 40% of corn from animal feed, the annual output of ethanol is equivalent to only 10% of gasoline consumption." I didn't know those numbers. Thanks Smil.
p. 478 - he points out the futility of the Paris agreements. Even if it all works out we're still going to clock in at a 50% level above 2018. It's kinda the obvious irony of it. and super true and misunderstood. IT's going to take a different innovation to clean it all up.
Overall, I did like the book. Sorry if I had a few harsh comments.
May 28, 2021
Pros:
1. The book was eye-opening....very informative.
So the book breaks down how there are some key transitions that continuously occur on this planet we call Earth. These transitions fall into these categories, population, environment, energy, economies, agriculture/food production, and i believe that's it.
In the population section you learn that the goal of any country should be to have a lower fertility rate and urban populated cities. A lower fertility enables parents/guardians to work more (instead of having to stay at home), it also enables the typical household to save money. I mean think about it....taking care of 8 kids?! The reason why poorer countries have high fertility rates is that they generally have a high mortality rate. So poor families have a lot of kids because chances are some will die anyway. Moreover, a lack of access to birth control options/medicare results in a surplus of offspring as well.
I think another interesting portion of this section was the eye-opening revelation that life expectancy for the typical person is closing in on it's peak, and will likely hit it by 2050 at age 80.
For example, in the united states, the nation's incremental gain for both sexes averaged around 152 days/year from 1900 to 1950 but from 1950 to 2000 it only averaged 63 days a year.
The agricultural section was interesting as well because it brings out how, as bad as sad as it is for famers to lose jobs, farms are operating at a higher capacity then ever...even with fewer people. This leads to an important point the book brings out....all of these transitions are interconnected in a way. The reason why we can even employ less people for specific tasks are because of the energy transition that took place alongside the agricultural/food development one. The development of electricity led to the development of machines, tractors, and LED lighting that make it to where you don't need manual labor to the extent that you used to need it.
2. I love how realistic the author is.
He doesn't just give you some unproven doomsday scenario, and he doesn't provide you with some over hopeful peaceful one either....he just gives you the hard cold facts.
Cons:
1. That's kinda the negative thought, the author overly emphasizes the facts and underemphasizes on the analysis in the form of language. This was a waste in my opinion...because Vaclav is just as good with numbers as he is with critically assessing things via language. The sections where Vaclav would blind language and analysis were the best parts of this book...but they made up for like only 40% of the book. While the other 60% or so consisted of sections with just numbers or mostly numbers and limited analysis.
Conclusion: Very informative and eye-opening....a book that will completely change the way you view "growth". However, this book lacks in the "engagement" department. If the author chose to engage with the reader more instead of simply listing out eye-opening, but dull in of itself, statistics/numeric break downs this book would have been a 5 star book for me.
1. The book was eye-opening....very informative.
So the book breaks down how there are some key transitions that continuously occur on this planet we call Earth. These transitions fall into these categories, population, environment, energy, economies, agriculture/food production, and i believe that's it.
In the population section you learn that the goal of any country should be to have a lower fertility rate and urban populated cities. A lower fertility enables parents/guardians to work more (instead of having to stay at home), it also enables the typical household to save money. I mean think about it....taking care of 8 kids?! The reason why poorer countries have high fertility rates is that they generally have a high mortality rate. So poor families have a lot of kids because chances are some will die anyway. Moreover, a lack of access to birth control options/medicare results in a surplus of offspring as well.
I think another interesting portion of this section was the eye-opening revelation that life expectancy for the typical person is closing in on it's peak, and will likely hit it by 2050 at age 80.
For example, in the united states, the nation's incremental gain for both sexes averaged around 152 days/year from 1900 to 1950 but from 1950 to 2000 it only averaged 63 days a year.
The agricultural section was interesting as well because it brings out how, as bad as sad as it is for famers to lose jobs, farms are operating at a higher capacity then ever...even with fewer people. This leads to an important point the book brings out....all of these transitions are interconnected in a way. The reason why we can even employ less people for specific tasks are because of the energy transition that took place alongside the agricultural/food development one. The development of electricity led to the development of machines, tractors, and LED lighting that make it to where you don't need manual labor to the extent that you used to need it.
2. I love how realistic the author is.
He doesn't just give you some unproven doomsday scenario, and he doesn't provide you with some over hopeful peaceful one either....he just gives you the hard cold facts.
Cons:
1. That's kinda the negative thought, the author overly emphasizes the facts and underemphasizes on the analysis in the form of language. This was a waste in my opinion...because Vaclav is just as good with numbers as he is with critically assessing things via language. The sections where Vaclav would blind language and analysis were the best parts of this book...but they made up for like only 40% of the book. While the other 60% or so consisted of sections with just numbers or mostly numbers and limited analysis.
Conclusion: Very informative and eye-opening....a book that will completely change the way you view "growth". However, this book lacks in the "engagement" department. If the author chose to engage with the reader more instead of simply listing out eye-opening, but dull in of itself, statistics/numeric break downs this book would have been a 5 star book for me.
Read
June 19, 2022phenomenally thorough. need to reread because density of information was high.
February 15, 2021
FIRST
(left wing DESTROYED)
(left wing DESTROYED)
June 20, 2022
An overdose of statistics to drive a particular narrative. Didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
3/5 stars
3/5 stars
February 25, 2025
Vaclav Smil, is a pretty impressive character and I’ve read at least one of his other books. Sometimes, I think he gets things wrong but he’s pretty good generally with his figures and looks “beneath the hood” to see what’s really going on. He seems a bit of a polymath. He’s written this book about grand transformations in human history: the development of machines, of agriculture, of electricity of modern communications. And, whilst giving credit to the better quality of life this has delivered to humans he is conscious of some of the problems these transformations have delivered. No great solutions are offered but it’s a thoughtful discussion. I’ve only read this in the Blinkist summary version and it’s inevitable that one misses a lot of the detail and nuances. Neverthless, I’ve included some snippets that I though are important, below:
The major transitions that have taken place across the world have had mixed results.
For many people in China, life changed beyond recognition in just two generations. It’s a story of progress. Or is it?.....The major transitions that have taken place across the world have had mixed results......China was transformed by interdependent transitions: population change, economic change, agricultural change....the improvements in quality of life that took place in twentieth-century China happened earlier for many Europeans, but over a longer period.
Many of the changes in the world have been undeniably positive. Your chances of survival are infinitely higher....there have been astonishing advances in technology. Though aging populations in Japan and Europe pose economic challenges.....And antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a ticking time bomb. Then there’s the environment
With its aging, shrinking population and expanding megacities, Japan represents the next stage of the transition.
There's a major transition going on in Japan.In the next 50 years, the population is expected to shrink by 45 million people....The fertility decline means that 70 percent of the world’s populations will have a reproduction rate below replacement level by 2050. As populations get older and smaller, we’re going to face new challenges....In Japan, nearly 40 percent of the population will be 65 or older by the year 2040....By 2050, there will be more than 400,000 people in Japan who are at least 100 years old.....But the average centenarian is unlikely to have a high quality of life.
Tokyo offers a worrying glimpse of the future–high housing costs, overcrowding, and lower quality of living. Megacities are bad news for the environment, too.
[I’ve given some thought to the aging population scenario ...especially in Japan and would make the following comments
Projections show that just 52 percent of the population will be of working age and theoretically supporting the rest of the population in 2050. And the commonly accepted view is that this is going to mean a disaster for the working class. Well let's look at it a bit more closely.
1. Actually, in Japan, a high proportion of the 65-80 year olds are actually working. Still making sushi or noodles or raising vegetables or being a dentist, driving a taxi or caring for the grandkids. So even without raising the retirement age you will really have more like 60 percent of the population supporting 31 percent.
2. A retirement age of 65 was probably fine when life expectancy was 65 but not really sensible now that people are living, healthily, much longer. We could probably up the formal retirement age, in stages, to 80 (where 80 year olds might be doing 15 hrs a week). This would massively reduce any burden on taxpayers.
3. Compulsory super at about 12% of income would go a long way to having retirees become self funding or near self funding. (Though hasn't happened in Japan).
4. Taking steps today to ensure that young people can have their own homes would take a massive rental subsidy off the books in retirement years. Plus ensuring that they are educated and healthy so they contribute more and for longer without becoming a burden themselves. With declining populations you have a surplus number of residences ...the capital investment has already been made.
5. We need to understand self funded retirees much better. Not all the people in the upper age bracket will require a lot of taxpayer support.
6. Until recently very few married women were in the formal workforce in Japan so the 30 percent of (working age) men were actually supporting the other 70%.......Admittedly women were working (hard) in the home caring for kids, washing, cooking etc. but this has been excluded from most countries statistics.
7. In 1945 about 50% of the population in Japan was busy in agriculture ..... a fair proportion of those just growing food. Today, less than 2% of the population is employed in growing food yet the tons of food produced is much greater. So you need fewer working people to feed a large number of non-working people. (Japan is a bit tricky with food because they import about 60% of their needs ....but the principle is the same ...fewer workers are needed in most sectors to produce the same volume of goods....because of improvements in technology).
8. We should also assume that improvements in technology will continue ...especially with robotics etc. So you won't need the same number of people to produce the same amount of stuff.
9. In1950, in Japan, 35% of the population were 0-14 years and had to be supported by the workers. (About 44% under 20 years). This is now only 9%. (or 12% under 20 years.). In other words there has been an offset of young vs old between 1950 and (projected) 2050.
10. Bottom line for me is that I'm reasonably optimistic that we can manage with a higher proportion of elderly and a lower proportion of workers. The alternative is a Ponzi scheme where you have to keep increasing the population ad infinitum to support the increasing numbers of elderly (who also keep increasing ad infinitum).
11. But, at some stage, we need to stabilise numbers or we disappear as a species. But for a long while (hundreds of years?) we can manage with things like immigration policies and subsidies to have kids.]
Agricultural transitions have revolutionized how we produce and consume food.
These days, famine is common only in sub-Saharan Africa,....But before we pat ourselves on the back, we should remember that obesity and unhealthy eating are also on the rise.
Affluent countries are responsible for millions of tons of food waste every year....And modern agriculture is wreaking havoc on the biosphere, producing between 20 to 30 percent of all greenhouse gases.
We’re going through a positive new energy transition, but it’ll take longer than we think.
It could be worse! For example, while pollution is a problem, the world would be far more polluted if all eight billion of us were still reliant on burning wood or dung as a source of heat. There have been other transformative energy transitions, using machines. Then there's electrification.....We're going through a positive new energy transition, but it'll take longer than we think......In terms of fuel consumption, the latest Boeing airplane is about 70 percent more efficient than the first commercial Boeing... But the shift to using renewable energy on a wider scale will take decades.
Rapid economic growth comes at a cost – for humans and the environment.
In early eighteenth-century France, for example, the average family spent 80 percent of their income on food.....now it’s much less.....This age of relatively high worldwide economic growth should continue in the decades to come, albeit at a slower pace.....Rapid economic growth comes at a cost-for humans and the environment.
China has the fastest growing economy, but also the sharpest rise in inequality. In a recent global ranking of happiness, wealthy South Korea languished in 54th place, below much poorer countries such as Guatemala.......We travel more often and far further than our ancestors could have imagined......We also have access to modern technology and communications. Of course, there are positives, but what about the negatives?..Despite their diminishing sizes, many devices have extremely high energy and material intensities, as well as short lifespans. The average smartphone lasts for around 20 months and likely won't be recycled.
Humans have had a monumental impact on the earth, and some of the changes are devastating and irreversible.
Human activity has left a mark on the majority of the earth's surface, transforming up to 67 percent of all ice-free land.....Essentially there is no wilderness left. It's not even a twenty-first-century problem. In 1782, the philosopher Rousseau walked into an isolated stretch of an Alpine ravine. As he relished the sensation of being the only person to have ever reached this remote spot, he heard a noise-the sound of machinery. (A water mill).......But the real tragedies are the qualitative changes-the loss of animals and biodiversity.... [I don’t think this loss is widely understood or appreciated]......Protecting the environment and meeting human needs are essentially at odds with each other.....The transitions so far haven't been all good, nor all bad, so our future......We're living longer, with higher incomes and access to an incredible variety of food. Travel is fast and affordable. We have unlimited access to free information. What's that, if not magical?
The transitions so far haven’t been all good, nor all bad, so our future predictions should also be balanced.
A lot of gloomy predictions have turned out to be way off the mark....On the other hand, we should avoid the opposite extreme-the optimistic and simplistic belief that we can continue improving endlessly.....But it won't matter how godlike humans become through technological advances if we destroy the environment in the meanwhile.....Ultimately, we'll always be dependent on the biosphere......One of the few things that's going in the right direction-energy. We're slowly shifting toward renewable electricity. But we're still heavily dependent on fossil fuels.....[My impression is that this represents a shift in Vaclav’s thinking....in previous books he was much less positive about renewable energy].
We must make a global effort to reduce inequality and protect the environment, but reaching a compromise won’t be easy.
4.5 billion people still have a poor quality of life.....and avoiding the devastating environmental consequences of global warming will be impossible unless we stop using fossil fuels......We need a mixture of determination and flexibility, experimenting with different solutions instead of relying on just one......Take nuclear power, for example. We shouldn't boycott it, but it's also a mistake to treat it as the solution.
The key message. A person living in 1940 would be amazed to see the world of 2020, transformed by technology, yet on the verge of a climate crisis. The coming decades are just as impossible to predict, but will likely be just as surprising and transformative-another grand transition.
What’s my overall take on the book. I liked it. A lot of interesting facts there and it flows well. I’m not sure that I learned much that was new to me and I have critiqued his fear about aging populations in Japan. And my critique would also apply to other countries. But, apart from that I think I’m more or less in agreement with what he’s saying. Five stars from me.
The major transitions that have taken place across the world have had mixed results.
For many people in China, life changed beyond recognition in just two generations. It’s a story of progress. Or is it?.....The major transitions that have taken place across the world have had mixed results......China was transformed by interdependent transitions: population change, economic change, agricultural change....the improvements in quality of life that took place in twentieth-century China happened earlier for many Europeans, but over a longer period.
Many of the changes in the world have been undeniably positive. Your chances of survival are infinitely higher....there have been astonishing advances in technology. Though aging populations in Japan and Europe pose economic challenges.....And antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a ticking time bomb. Then there’s the environment
With its aging, shrinking population and expanding megacities, Japan represents the next stage of the transition.
There's a major transition going on in Japan.In the next 50 years, the population is expected to shrink by 45 million people....The fertility decline means that 70 percent of the world’s populations will have a reproduction rate below replacement level by 2050. As populations get older and smaller, we’re going to face new challenges....In Japan, nearly 40 percent of the population will be 65 or older by the year 2040....By 2050, there will be more than 400,000 people in Japan who are at least 100 years old.....But the average centenarian is unlikely to have a high quality of life.
Tokyo offers a worrying glimpse of the future–high housing costs, overcrowding, and lower quality of living. Megacities are bad news for the environment, too.
[I’ve given some thought to the aging population scenario ...especially in Japan and would make the following comments
Projections show that just 52 percent of the population will be of working age and theoretically supporting the rest of the population in 2050. And the commonly accepted view is that this is going to mean a disaster for the working class. Well let's look at it a bit more closely.
1. Actually, in Japan, a high proportion of the 65-80 year olds are actually working. Still making sushi or noodles or raising vegetables or being a dentist, driving a taxi or caring for the grandkids. So even without raising the retirement age you will really have more like 60 percent of the population supporting 31 percent.
2. A retirement age of 65 was probably fine when life expectancy was 65 but not really sensible now that people are living, healthily, much longer. We could probably up the formal retirement age, in stages, to 80 (where 80 year olds might be doing 15 hrs a week). This would massively reduce any burden on taxpayers.
3. Compulsory super at about 12% of income would go a long way to having retirees become self funding or near self funding. (Though hasn't happened in Japan).
4. Taking steps today to ensure that young people can have their own homes would take a massive rental subsidy off the books in retirement years. Plus ensuring that they are educated and healthy so they contribute more and for longer without becoming a burden themselves. With declining populations you have a surplus number of residences ...the capital investment has already been made.
5. We need to understand self funded retirees much better. Not all the people in the upper age bracket will require a lot of taxpayer support.
6. Until recently very few married women were in the formal workforce in Japan so the 30 percent of (working age) men were actually supporting the other 70%.......Admittedly women were working (hard) in the home caring for kids, washing, cooking etc. but this has been excluded from most countries statistics.
7. In 1945 about 50% of the population in Japan was busy in agriculture ..... a fair proportion of those just growing food. Today, less than 2% of the population is employed in growing food yet the tons of food produced is much greater. So you need fewer working people to feed a large number of non-working people. (Japan is a bit tricky with food because they import about 60% of their needs ....but the principle is the same ...fewer workers are needed in most sectors to produce the same volume of goods....because of improvements in technology).
8. We should also assume that improvements in technology will continue ...especially with robotics etc. So you won't need the same number of people to produce the same amount of stuff.
9. In1950, in Japan, 35% of the population were 0-14 years and had to be supported by the workers. (About 44% under 20 years). This is now only 9%. (or 12% under 20 years.). In other words there has been an offset of young vs old between 1950 and (projected) 2050.
10. Bottom line for me is that I'm reasonably optimistic that we can manage with a higher proportion of elderly and a lower proportion of workers. The alternative is a Ponzi scheme where you have to keep increasing the population ad infinitum to support the increasing numbers of elderly (who also keep increasing ad infinitum).
11. But, at some stage, we need to stabilise numbers or we disappear as a species. But for a long while (hundreds of years?) we can manage with things like immigration policies and subsidies to have kids.]
Agricultural transitions have revolutionized how we produce and consume food.
These days, famine is common only in sub-Saharan Africa,....But before we pat ourselves on the back, we should remember that obesity and unhealthy eating are also on the rise.
Affluent countries are responsible for millions of tons of food waste every year....And modern agriculture is wreaking havoc on the biosphere, producing between 20 to 30 percent of all greenhouse gases.
We’re going through a positive new energy transition, but it’ll take longer than we think.
It could be worse! For example, while pollution is a problem, the world would be far more polluted if all eight billion of us were still reliant on burning wood or dung as a source of heat. There have been other transformative energy transitions, using machines. Then there's electrification.....We're going through a positive new energy transition, but it'll take longer than we think......In terms of fuel consumption, the latest Boeing airplane is about 70 percent more efficient than the first commercial Boeing... But the shift to using renewable energy on a wider scale will take decades.
Rapid economic growth comes at a cost – for humans and the environment.
In early eighteenth-century France, for example, the average family spent 80 percent of their income on food.....now it’s much less.....This age of relatively high worldwide economic growth should continue in the decades to come, albeit at a slower pace.....Rapid economic growth comes at a cost-for humans and the environment.
China has the fastest growing economy, but also the sharpest rise in inequality. In a recent global ranking of happiness, wealthy South Korea languished in 54th place, below much poorer countries such as Guatemala.......We travel more often and far further than our ancestors could have imagined......We also have access to modern technology and communications. Of course, there are positives, but what about the negatives?..Despite their diminishing sizes, many devices have extremely high energy and material intensities, as well as short lifespans. The average smartphone lasts for around 20 months and likely won't be recycled.
Humans have had a monumental impact on the earth, and some of the changes are devastating and irreversible.
Human activity has left a mark on the majority of the earth's surface, transforming up to 67 percent of all ice-free land.....Essentially there is no wilderness left. It's not even a twenty-first-century problem. In 1782, the philosopher Rousseau walked into an isolated stretch of an Alpine ravine. As he relished the sensation of being the only person to have ever reached this remote spot, he heard a noise-the sound of machinery. (A water mill).......But the real tragedies are the qualitative changes-the loss of animals and biodiversity.... [I don’t think this loss is widely understood or appreciated]......Protecting the environment and meeting human needs are essentially at odds with each other.....The transitions so far haven't been all good, nor all bad, so our future......We're living longer, with higher incomes and access to an incredible variety of food. Travel is fast and affordable. We have unlimited access to free information. What's that, if not magical?
The transitions so far haven’t been all good, nor all bad, so our future predictions should also be balanced.
A lot of gloomy predictions have turned out to be way off the mark....On the other hand, we should avoid the opposite extreme-the optimistic and simplistic belief that we can continue improving endlessly.....But it won't matter how godlike humans become through technological advances if we destroy the environment in the meanwhile.....Ultimately, we'll always be dependent on the biosphere......One of the few things that's going in the right direction-energy. We're slowly shifting toward renewable electricity. But we're still heavily dependent on fossil fuels.....[My impression is that this represents a shift in Vaclav’s thinking....in previous books he was much less positive about renewable energy].
We must make a global effort to reduce inequality and protect the environment, but reaching a compromise won’t be easy.
4.5 billion people still have a poor quality of life.....and avoiding the devastating environmental consequences of global warming will be impossible unless we stop using fossil fuels......We need a mixture of determination and flexibility, experimenting with different solutions instead of relying on just one......Take nuclear power, for example. We shouldn't boycott it, but it's also a mistake to treat it as the solution.
The key message. A person living in 1940 would be amazed to see the world of 2020, transformed by technology, yet on the verge of a climate crisis. The coming decades are just as impossible to predict, but will likely be just as surprising and transformative-another grand transition.
What’s my overall take on the book. I liked it. A lot of interesting facts there and it flows well. I’m not sure that I learned much that was new to me and I have critiqued his fear about aging populations in Japan. And my critique would also apply to other countries. But, apart from that I think I’m more or less in agreement with what he’s saying. Five stars from me.
July 24, 2025
Solid 4 stars; this is some decent big history writing in the vein of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies; a lot of info to take in and Smil lays it out beautifully; what I missed, sorely, was Smil's own take on things; a grander view to look at the modern world afresh.
December 23, 2021
Replete, with small details, this book, has a lot of interest; the final chapter, is much in line, with my opinion, that the 1.5/2 C projections are exceptionally optimisitic; the real situation is catastrophically worse. Recommended.
May 22, 2021
Vaclav Smil is the great realist analyst of the modern world and "Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made" is yet another stellar contribution. Broadly speaking, his topic is the material substrate of contemporary civilization, inclusive of scientific, technological, economic, environmental, and historic perspectives. He states: "I find it impossible to understand our world without close attention to energy and the biosphere", and he is especially deep and illuminating in describing those aspects of the world.
Smil is astonishingly prolific, with over 40 books about 500 papers to his credit. Now in his late 70s, he has recently been producing books that are both summative of his career and apropos of the latest circumstances. "Grand Transitions" follows "Energy and Civilization: A History" (2017) and "Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities" (2019). Each is a comprehensive, rigorous, quantitative report and synthesis from a highly illuminating perspective of how the world works.
"Grand Transitions" takes on 5 fundamental transitions that made the modern world: population, agriculture, energy, economics, and environment and considers them in all their complexity, "trajectories, interactions, and consequences". Everything else I have ever read in this field now feels shallow by comparison.
Near the conclusion he sums up: "We should be acting as complexifying minimalists rather than as simplifying maximalists, being determined but flexible, eclectic but discriminating. The first contrast means favoring a multitude of approaches rather than relying on any single (and purportedly perfect) solution and championing minimal inputs compatible with the highest achievable useful services. The other contrasts mean that there should be no place for a priori ideological purity that would not tolerate particular solutions, no categorical exclusions of certain ingredients . . . and no inflexible insistence on what is best”
The world would be a better place if Smil-ian rigor and the Smil-ian spirit were more widely adopted.
Smil is astonishingly prolific, with over 40 books about 500 papers to his credit. Now in his late 70s, he has recently been producing books that are both summative of his career and apropos of the latest circumstances. "Grand Transitions" follows "Energy and Civilization: A History" (2017) and "Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities" (2019). Each is a comprehensive, rigorous, quantitative report and synthesis from a highly illuminating perspective of how the world works.
"Grand Transitions" takes on 5 fundamental transitions that made the modern world: population, agriculture, energy, economics, and environment and considers them in all their complexity, "trajectories, interactions, and consequences". Everything else I have ever read in this field now feels shallow by comparison.
Near the conclusion he sums up: "We should be acting as complexifying minimalists rather than as simplifying maximalists, being determined but flexible, eclectic but discriminating. The first contrast means favoring a multitude of approaches rather than relying on any single (and purportedly perfect) solution and championing minimal inputs compatible with the highest achievable useful services. The other contrasts mean that there should be no place for a priori ideological purity that would not tolerate particular solutions, no categorical exclusions of certain ingredients . . . and no inflexible insistence on what is best”
The world would be a better place if Smil-ian rigor and the Smil-ian spirit were more widely adopted.
October 21, 2021
The major transitions that have changed world have had mixed results (i.e. China or Africa). With it's aging and shrinking population, Japan represents one of the transitions. The mega cities of Japan are bad for the environment and socially not good for the population. Agricultural transitions are making food available for many people, but this is not translating to better health. We eat too much and this causing obesity throughout the developed world. It is also causing a lot of food waste along with the pollution to produce it. We are going through a positive energy transition, but it will take longer than we think. The rapid economic growth that started in the 18th century has allowed us to have much of our needs, but there are some negative consequences. Many of our actions and consumerism is causing negative side effects to the environment. Humans had a monumental impact on earth and that impact is not reversible. Loss of biodiversity is a major issue and certain losses may never be turned back. The transitions haven't been all good and all bad so we should also think about the future in that way. Progress will take time so we should be cautions about making predictions. We need a mixture of flexibility and fortitude to push through the major challenges we face.
February 25, 2025
Too many unnecessary data shadows critical points made in the book.
July 16, 2022
Exceptionally dense in information, thorough in argumentation and trying very hard to go exactly between optimism and pessimism. Key take aways:
a) industrial revolution was not as much steam based as thought before
b) the great transitions basically remade the world completely in last two centuries, with grow rates unimaginable before
c) the "no-emission" future is at both times extremely important...and unachievable
d) very good refuttals of Pinker and other "world is actually fine" philosophers
A good handbook for anybody interested in energy/ economy policy.
a) industrial revolution was not as much steam based as thought before
b) the great transitions basically remade the world completely in last two centuries, with grow rates unimaginable before
c) the "no-emission" future is at both times extremely important...and unachievable
d) very good refuttals of Pinker and other "world is actually fine" philosophers
A good handbook for anybody interested in energy/ economy policy.
Read
August 7, 2021A person living in 1940 would be amazed to see the world of 2020, transformed by technology, yet on the verge of a climate crisis. The coming decades are just as impossible to predict, but will likely be just as surprising and transformative – another grand transition.
---
The arc of a grand transition can be summed up in the story of a single person.
A girl is born in rural China in 1945. Her family is desperately poor. But this girl is one of the lucky ones. She survives a devastating famine that kills her family, friends, and neighbors. She grows up, gets married, and has a son.
The incredible pace of change in China – a result of economic reforms – opens up a world of opportunity for this woman and her family. In the 1990s, her adult son graduates from university, and then gets a job in the burgeoning market of electronics manufacturing. He makes a fortune and buys multiple properties. He starts a family of his own.
In the twenty-first century, the man’s adult son drives a sports car and enjoys a life of luxury and international travel. The family has come a long way from the grandmother’s humble origins.
Although this story is fictional, it could well be true. For many people in China, life changed beyond recognition in just two generations. It’s a story of progress. Or is it?
The key message here is: The major transitions that have taken place across the world have had mixed results.
China was transformed by interdependent transitions: population change, economic change, agricultural change. Similar transitions have happened across the world on different scales. For example, the improvements in quality of life that took place in twentieth-century China happened earlier for many Europeans, but over a longer period. In poorer parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the transition is still ongoing.
Many of the changes in the world have been undeniably positive. Your chances of survival are infinitely higher than those of your ancestors. And just think of the astonishing advances in technology. Thanks to the internet, you have access to unlimited information – something that would have been unthinkable not so long ago.
But other recent changes have been far less benign. Aging populations in Japan and Europe pose economic challenges for the next generation. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a ticking time bomb. Then there’s the environment – a victim of human progress.
Our existence has quite literally shaped the world, for better and worse.
---
Next time you go shopping, keep this in mind. Our ancestors considered themselves lucky if they could upgrade from a stool to a chair, or afford multiple cooking pots. In early eighteenth-century France, for example, the average family spent 80 percent of their income on food.
Most of us now live in a consumer society, buying far more than just the basics. This was made possible by the rapid economic growth that began in the nineteenth century, after centuries of very gradual growth.
While we can’t know exactly what the future holds, the statistics suggest we have reason to be optimistic. This age of relatively high worldwide economic growth should continue in the decades to come, albeit at a slower pace.
This is good news, right? Economic growth raises standards of living, allows us to travel, and to upgrade to the next smartphone in addition to a new cooking pot.
The key message here is: Rapid economic growth comes at a cost – for humans and the environment.
The flip side of a booming economy is a widening gap between rich and poor. China has the fastest growing economy, but also the sharpest rise in inequality.
There are some other factors to keep in mind, too. On the surface, they all seem like signs of progress and higher living standards.
First, mass consumption. Our insatiable appetite for buying things shows no signs of slowing down, even though it doesn’t make us happier. In a recent global ranking of happiness, wealthy South Korea languished in 54th place, below much poorer countries such as Guatemala.
Second, increased mobility. We travel more often and far further than our ancestors could have imagined, leading to exciting opportunities. But stressful commutes are making many of us miserable, and excessive travel has an environmental impact.
Third, modern technology and communications. Of course, there are positives, but what about the negatives? Information overload, loss of privacy, reduced face-to-face interaction, a decline in reading . . . and many others.
These issues have received a lot of media attention in recent years, unlike another consequence of the technological revolution – the toll on the environment. Despite their diminishing sizes, many devices have extremely high energy and material intensities, as well as short lifespans. The average smartphone lasts for around 20 months and likely won’t be recycled.
---
The arc of a grand transition can be summed up in the story of a single person.
A girl is born in rural China in 1945. Her family is desperately poor. But this girl is one of the lucky ones. She survives a devastating famine that kills her family, friends, and neighbors. She grows up, gets married, and has a son.
The incredible pace of change in China – a result of economic reforms – opens up a world of opportunity for this woman and her family. In the 1990s, her adult son graduates from university, and then gets a job in the burgeoning market of electronics manufacturing. He makes a fortune and buys multiple properties. He starts a family of his own.
In the twenty-first century, the man’s adult son drives a sports car and enjoys a life of luxury and international travel. The family has come a long way from the grandmother’s humble origins.
Although this story is fictional, it could well be true. For many people in China, life changed beyond recognition in just two generations. It’s a story of progress. Or is it?
The key message here is: The major transitions that have taken place across the world have had mixed results.
China was transformed by interdependent transitions: population change, economic change, agricultural change. Similar transitions have happened across the world on different scales. For example, the improvements in quality of life that took place in twentieth-century China happened earlier for many Europeans, but over a longer period. In poorer parts of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the transition is still ongoing.
Many of the changes in the world have been undeniably positive. Your chances of survival are infinitely higher than those of your ancestors. And just think of the astonishing advances in technology. Thanks to the internet, you have access to unlimited information – something that would have been unthinkable not so long ago.
But other recent changes have been far less benign. Aging populations in Japan and Europe pose economic challenges for the next generation. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are a ticking time bomb. Then there’s the environment – a victim of human progress.
Our existence has quite literally shaped the world, for better and worse.
---
Next time you go shopping, keep this in mind. Our ancestors considered themselves lucky if they could upgrade from a stool to a chair, or afford multiple cooking pots. In early eighteenth-century France, for example, the average family spent 80 percent of their income on food.
Most of us now live in a consumer society, buying far more than just the basics. This was made possible by the rapid economic growth that began in the nineteenth century, after centuries of very gradual growth.
While we can’t know exactly what the future holds, the statistics suggest we have reason to be optimistic. This age of relatively high worldwide economic growth should continue in the decades to come, albeit at a slower pace.
This is good news, right? Economic growth raises standards of living, allows us to travel, and to upgrade to the next smartphone in addition to a new cooking pot.
The key message here is: Rapid economic growth comes at a cost – for humans and the environment.
The flip side of a booming economy is a widening gap between rich and poor. China has the fastest growing economy, but also the sharpest rise in inequality.
There are some other factors to keep in mind, too. On the surface, they all seem like signs of progress and higher living standards.
First, mass consumption. Our insatiable appetite for buying things shows no signs of slowing down, even though it doesn’t make us happier. In a recent global ranking of happiness, wealthy South Korea languished in 54th place, below much poorer countries such as Guatemala.
Second, increased mobility. We travel more often and far further than our ancestors could have imagined, leading to exciting opportunities. But stressful commutes are making many of us miserable, and excessive travel has an environmental impact.
Third, modern technology and communications. Of course, there are positives, but what about the negatives? Information overload, loss of privacy, reduced face-to-face interaction, a decline in reading . . . and many others.
These issues have received a lot of media attention in recent years, unlike another consequence of the technological revolution – the toll on the environment. Despite their diminishing sizes, many devices have extremely high energy and material intensities, as well as short lifespans. The average smartphone lasts for around 20 months and likely won’t be recycled.
August 1, 2022
Grand Transitions isn’t an easy book, dominated as it is by data rather than storytelling, it should be required reading for those who see themselves as global citizens. It doesn’t attempt a moral tale about the arrival of modernity, but simply sketches the interlocking transitions that define all modern societies from premodern or tradititional ones. There are four broad transitions that modern societies have gone through: demographic, agricultural/diet, energy, and economy. The graph for so many areas of modern life can be represented by a steep exponential curve. So for example energy. In 1850 about 50% of global energy was derived from draft animals, then 40% from human muscles, and the remaining 10% waterwheels, windmills, and new steam engines. By the year 2000 only a small portion of global kinetic energy came from human or animals. Almost all the cars on roads around the world are moved by internal combustion engines.
There is nothing nostalgic about Vaclav Smil’s approach to the question of modernity. It’s plain that life was difficult for the mass of human beings before the rise of those exponential curves. Human life expectancy was low, and the comforts of human invention and art were limited to a sliver of the population. Most people ate bland diets of which up to 80% consisted of a dominant regional staple (rice, wheat, etc). Economic growth was more or less stagnant for centuries on end before modernity, leaving little room for personal or familial improvement. Understanding this book, no modern person would choose to return to a premodern society. Our modern lives and values are only imaginable in light of the accomplishment of these grand transitions.
But there’s one more transition in the book, and this one makes for a sort of internal tension in the book. The same period of time has brought about an environmental transition that threatens our modern existence. The scope of the human impact on the Earth is mind boggling. About 63% of ice-free land has been affected by human activity. We get a tour through data on the loss of global biodiversity and anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere. Smil isn’t one to believe that human genius entitles us to a never ending growth curve. There are planetary limits, and modernity has brought us face to face with their reality.
The conclusion of Grand Transitions isn’t that we need to go through some further Grand Transition away from modernity. Smil doesn’t preach in favor of any plan for shifting quickly to a green economy, or moving to another economic model. For Smil modernity is inextricably linked to the massive energy surpluses of fossil fuels. There’s no realistic scenario in which people from wealthy nations sacrifice a huge portion of their energy, nor one in which less wealthy nations take a pass on those comforts. This doesn’t mean we won’t collectively suffer as we pass planetary limits, but he sees only a pragmatic path ahead: “The best near-term outlook is for an early stabilization of releases followed by slow gradual decline.” As a species we’ll need to find adaptations to the climate disasters, but we’ll never let go of modernity now that it’s here.
There is nothing nostalgic about Vaclav Smil’s approach to the question of modernity. It’s plain that life was difficult for the mass of human beings before the rise of those exponential curves. Human life expectancy was low, and the comforts of human invention and art were limited to a sliver of the population. Most people ate bland diets of which up to 80% consisted of a dominant regional staple (rice, wheat, etc). Economic growth was more or less stagnant for centuries on end before modernity, leaving little room for personal or familial improvement. Understanding this book, no modern person would choose to return to a premodern society. Our modern lives and values are only imaginable in light of the accomplishment of these grand transitions.
But there’s one more transition in the book, and this one makes for a sort of internal tension in the book. The same period of time has brought about an environmental transition that threatens our modern existence. The scope of the human impact on the Earth is mind boggling. About 63% of ice-free land has been affected by human activity. We get a tour through data on the loss of global biodiversity and anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere. Smil isn’t one to believe that human genius entitles us to a never ending growth curve. There are planetary limits, and modernity has brought us face to face with their reality.
The conclusion of Grand Transitions isn’t that we need to go through some further Grand Transition away from modernity. Smil doesn’t preach in favor of any plan for shifting quickly to a green economy, or moving to another economic model. For Smil modernity is inextricably linked to the massive energy surpluses of fossil fuels. There’s no realistic scenario in which people from wealthy nations sacrifice a huge portion of their energy, nor one in which less wealthy nations take a pass on those comforts. This doesn’t mean we won’t collectively suffer as we pass planetary limits, but he sees only a pragmatic path ahead: “The best near-term outlook is for an early stabilization of releases followed by slow gradual decline.” As a species we’ll need to find adaptations to the climate disasters, but we’ll never let go of modernity now that it’s here.
September 10, 2021
Smil had such wide arcs to his books and this one is the Making of the Modern World was no exception. Bill Gates got me onto Smil as he is one of his favorite authors. He is full of statistics and has me skimming and reading, skimming and reading, as the works are dense enough that I can't sustain a full read.
Smil is brilliant and makes sense of things that I've not tried to understand prior. The four themes he uses to show how modern nations emerged were: population, transportation, food and energy, or at least that's how I recall the foursome.
No large generalizations can be made as sometimes one of these precedes the others, while others take 100 more years to experience a similar development. Sometimes the emergence is gradual while other times quite sudden. Catch-up societies to modernity, such as modern China made quick gains, as did Japan once a 250 year patriarch died. So, Smil shows certain progressions, but no real ability to generalize, as the evolution has been quite particular. Nonetheless, the evolution of these 4 areas has marked the emergence of modern societies.
Smil takes on the overly optimistic (Pinker in Enlightenment Now), and the overly pessimistic (many whose names I can't recall) about the future of our planet, but somehow I'm not left feeling very encouraged. Although he punctures Pinker's optimism, and also dystopian futurists, he basically ends with the belief that we can't ever really project the future; there are always surprises. But then, he seems to tilt towards ending the book with a conundrum, which sways towards the pessimistic.
That is, he makes a compelling case for two contrasting phenomena, both needed, and at odds with one another: Planetary survival and world income inequality (at the bottom impoverished level, not US income inequality). If the 60% of the world's population who are barely surviving are to prosper into a bit more comfort, it will take steel, cement, energy and resources which then further deplete, the already depleted planet's energy and resources.
These depletions have mainly been made over the past 100 years by the 40% of modern societies, and so, though we've been the depleters, the current realization of how this has depleted our earthly future viability, makes this not available to the 60% of the planet desiring a bit more comfort. Thus, there's a conflict here of two competing sets of goals, each of which he feels necessary. He ends with a sort of "nothing new under the sun", and a combination of both expressed hope, but in reality a sort of desperation.
I liked his other book "Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Facts you need to Know" a bit better for this very reason. Grand Transitions left me a bit hopeless.
Smil is brilliant and makes sense of things that I've not tried to understand prior. The four themes he uses to show how modern nations emerged were: population, transportation, food and energy, or at least that's how I recall the foursome.
No large generalizations can be made as sometimes one of these precedes the others, while others take 100 more years to experience a similar development. Sometimes the emergence is gradual while other times quite sudden. Catch-up societies to modernity, such as modern China made quick gains, as did Japan once a 250 year patriarch died. So, Smil shows certain progressions, but no real ability to generalize, as the evolution has been quite particular. Nonetheless, the evolution of these 4 areas has marked the emergence of modern societies.
Smil takes on the overly optimistic (Pinker in Enlightenment Now), and the overly pessimistic (many whose names I can't recall) about the future of our planet, but somehow I'm not left feeling very encouraged. Although he punctures Pinker's optimism, and also dystopian futurists, he basically ends with the belief that we can't ever really project the future; there are always surprises. But then, he seems to tilt towards ending the book with a conundrum, which sways towards the pessimistic.
That is, he makes a compelling case for two contrasting phenomena, both needed, and at odds with one another: Planetary survival and world income inequality (at the bottom impoverished level, not US income inequality). If the 60% of the world's population who are barely surviving are to prosper into a bit more comfort, it will take steel, cement, energy and resources which then further deplete, the already depleted planet's energy and resources.
These depletions have mainly been made over the past 100 years by the 40% of modern societies, and so, though we've been the depleters, the current realization of how this has depleted our earthly future viability, makes this not available to the 60% of the planet desiring a bit more comfort. Thus, there's a conflict here of two competing sets of goals, each of which he feels necessary. He ends with a sort of "nothing new under the sun", and a combination of both expressed hope, but in reality a sort of desperation.
I liked his other book "Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Facts you need to Know" a bit better for this very reason. Grand Transitions left me a bit hopeless.
August 4, 2025
Great book, full of numbers. I recommend it if you're into that.
These are personal notes I took for myself. I listened to the audio version of this book, mostly while driving. It is full of interesting factlets like these ones, but I couldn't write them all down.
Climate change - the author says he does not believe the catastrophic predictions, but he also doesn't believe that nothing seriously bad will happen. He also thinks the transitioning to a 0 carbon and 100% electric world will take generations, based on how fast the previous transitions took (wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to gas, the adoption of nuclear, etc).
Steel, cement, plastic and ammonia - the four pillars of modern civilization.
In some recent year, car manufacturing globally took 7 exa Joules, whereas for phones, it took 1 exa Joule. The weight of the cars was 180 times greater than that of all the phones produced that year though. Also, the lifetime of cars is greater than that of phones!
Europe receives 50% of the world's tourism and East APAC 25%
In rural areas, 8-10 square meters were the housing requirements per person. In the soviet union, this got to 4sqm at some point.
Manufacturing beats services in generating value throughout the economy, because it generates more R&D and jobs of all kinds (sales, services, etc)
The world.produces 100 million cars per year, and 2 billion smartphones.
The world will continue to become richer, but development expressed as percentages of GDP growth per year seems to follow an s-curve. The US hit its inflection point in 1997, China in 2016, and France some time before the US (not very close).
The author says fats are basically not linked to heart disease.
In 1987 nuclear energy supplied the greatest percentage of energy globally that it ever had, 16-17%. It only went down from there. This is because it turned out to be more expensive than other forms of energy (fossil fuels)
Economic development is not a good means of contraception but the opposite is true. Contraception is a good way to create economic development.
Global trade is dominated by fuel, ores and food
These are personal notes I took for myself. I listened to the audio version of this book, mostly while driving. It is full of interesting factlets like these ones, but I couldn't write them all down.
Climate change - the author says he does not believe the catastrophic predictions, but he also doesn't believe that nothing seriously bad will happen. He also thinks the transitioning to a 0 carbon and 100% electric world will take generations, based on how fast the previous transitions took (wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to gas, the adoption of nuclear, etc).
Steel, cement, plastic and ammonia - the four pillars of modern civilization.
In some recent year, car manufacturing globally took 7 exa Joules, whereas for phones, it took 1 exa Joule. The weight of the cars was 180 times greater than that of all the phones produced that year though. Also, the lifetime of cars is greater than that of phones!
Europe receives 50% of the world's tourism and East APAC 25%
In rural areas, 8-10 square meters were the housing requirements per person. In the soviet union, this got to 4sqm at some point.
Manufacturing beats services in generating value throughout the economy, because it generates more R&D and jobs of all kinds (sales, services, etc)
The world.produces 100 million cars per year, and 2 billion smartphones.
The world will continue to become richer, but development expressed as percentages of GDP growth per year seems to follow an s-curve. The US hit its inflection point in 1997, China in 2016, and France some time before the US (not very close).
The author says fats are basically not linked to heart disease.
In 1987 nuclear energy supplied the greatest percentage of energy globally that it ever had, 16-17%. It only went down from there. This is because it turned out to be more expensive than other forms of energy (fossil fuels)
Economic development is not a good means of contraception but the opposite is true. Contraception is a good way to create economic development.
Global trade is dominated by fuel, ores and food
July 11, 2024
Mr. Smil bombards us with facts and figures. It's hundreds of pages of a never-ending stream of numbers. You couldn't possibly absorb them all, or fact check them, or verify that he is using his statistics fairly, but the numbers create an air of authority. I didn't buy into the authority part. In fact, it bugged me and made me suspicious, but then I relaxed and just let all of the numbers flow over me. I read it like I was listening to a symphony, picking out the parts I liked, looking for themes, variations and repetitions and not worrying about every note or chord change or other details. This made the whole experience much more enjoyable and allowed me to appreciate the beauty of Mr. Smil's style, which is truly engaging. It's hard to write a book with so many numbers and manage to avoid being butt boring.
My bigger problem with the book was that I have come to loathe grand theories of history. They tend to be either so obvious as to be trivial or to be built on shaky foundations. This one was more on the so obvious as to be trivial side of the scale. It's obvious to even the most casual observer that there have been orders of magnitude changes in key aspects of our economy and technology over the past two hundred years that have deeply impacted everyone, mostly for the better. It's also obvious that many of these changes cannot continue at the same rate as they will run up against hard physical barriers or destroy the planet. But then maybe there will be new massive changes of different kinds. Who knows? So in the end, apart from the poetic river of words and numbers, there isn't a lot of substance here. Still when it comes to grand theoreticians, I'd pick Mr. Smil over Jared Diamond or Stephen Pinker or Yuval Harari. He tries hard to be accurate, to give a balanced view and not let his theories go running off on their own. And I share his conclusion in the epilogue that the near-term future is more likely to be more of the same mixed bag as the present than it is to be disastrously bad or wonderfully good.
My bigger problem with the book was that I have come to loathe grand theories of history. They tend to be either so obvious as to be trivial or to be built on shaky foundations. This one was more on the so obvious as to be trivial side of the scale. It's obvious to even the most casual observer that there have been orders of magnitude changes in key aspects of our economy and technology over the past two hundred years that have deeply impacted everyone, mostly for the better. It's also obvious that many of these changes cannot continue at the same rate as they will run up against hard physical barriers or destroy the planet. But then maybe there will be new massive changes of different kinds. Who knows? So in the end, apart from the poetic river of words and numbers, there isn't a lot of substance here. Still when it comes to grand theoreticians, I'd pick Mr. Smil over Jared Diamond or Stephen Pinker or Yuval Harari. He tries hard to be accurate, to give a balanced view and not let his theories go running off on their own. And I share his conclusion in the epilogue that the near-term future is more likely to be more of the same mixed bag as the present than it is to be disastrously bad or wonderfully good.
August 2, 2021
This book seems essentially dishonest. The author uses very solid historical data to shoot down a viable future given our past and current trajectories along every major influencer of climate change and ‘sustainability’. He states, and backs it up with data, that it unrealistic to think we will change our collective behavior enough to significantly reverse emissions by 2050, let alone become neutral.
His solution? Hope the global biosphere will change in positive ways we can’t imagine yet as emissions and temperatures worsen and, only implied, hope the necessity for invention and innovation brought on by the coming crises will force us to adapt in less apocalyptic methods than many tired and defeated long time environmentalists are suggesting.
This is a tediously dry book and the final chapter has enough inconsistencies in the conclusions that one assumes Smil is fumbling to sound optimistic when it’s clear to him we don’t have a clue how to prevent ourselves from bringing on further deterioration of the planet and its ability to support life as we and all the other species on the planet know it.
So we are left with an extreme urgency to do everything we can to reduce our impacts and use of natural resources but shouldn’t expect any miraculous significant reversal of the negative course we are following.
His solution? Hope the global biosphere will change in positive ways we can’t imagine yet as emissions and temperatures worsen and, only implied, hope the necessity for invention and innovation brought on by the coming crises will force us to adapt in less apocalyptic methods than many tired and defeated long time environmentalists are suggesting.
This is a tediously dry book and the final chapter has enough inconsistencies in the conclusions that one assumes Smil is fumbling to sound optimistic when it’s clear to him we don’t have a clue how to prevent ourselves from bringing on further deterioration of the planet and its ability to support life as we and all the other species on the planet know it.
So we are left with an extreme urgency to do everything we can to reduce our impacts and use of natural resources but shouldn’t expect any miraculous significant reversal of the negative course we are following.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 12, 2022
I am a big fan of Vaclav Smil and this was the first of his books I decided to try listening on audio book (not recommended as sometimes can go into too much detail and not the most engaging thing to "listen" to while commuting/from work). Working in the energy industry, I was expecting the discussion to revolve entirely around the energy transition. While there was large portions of the book focused on this topic, there were a lot focused on other crucial topics such as food/agriculture, developing economies, populations, etc. I admire Smil for his depth of research into multiple disciplines and his practical outlook on the future re. energy, environment, economies. What is particularly insightful is his criticism of both extreme views of an apocalyptic future resulting from unmitigated climate change and his criticism of those who overemphasize human abilities to manipulate our environment to sustain indefinite growth without significant consequences to future generations. He is a realist who believes in both the potential of human ingenuity and the fundamental constraints of physics and has a canny ability to communicate his views in a logical and succinct manner.
December 22, 2025
Grand Transitions by Vaclav Smil is a very dense, statistics-heavy book, but it offers a genuinely fresh and rigorous perspective on a wide range of topics. If you are looking to understand the major structural changes of the past few centuries and their long-term implications, this book is essential reading. Smil provides a broad, evidence-driven overview of the key transitions that have shaped modern human civilization, particularly in energy use, industrialization, agriculture, and demographics.
I especially appreciated his thoughts on climate change, which is grounded in data rather than ideology and places current concerns within a much longer historical context. The book can be demanding and is not written for casual reading, but the depth of analysis is precisely what makes it valuable. Overall, it is a highly informative and intellectually challenging work that significantly deepened my understanding of how gradual, cumulative changes drive history more than sudden revolutions.
I especially appreciated his thoughts on climate change, which is grounded in data rather than ideology and places current concerns within a much longer historical context. The book can be demanding and is not written for casual reading, but the depth of analysis is precisely what makes it valuable. Overall, it is a highly informative and intellectually challenging work that significantly deepened my understanding of how gradual, cumulative changes drive history more than sudden revolutions.
December 22, 2021
I've read a couple of Smil's books, and am currently reading one more. This one is my favorite so far. He tells a story about major transitions in poplulation, agriculture, energy and more in a compelling way that really helped me understand each change and the current and potential future impact too. I listened to the book and read it simultaneously. I recommend that approach because you get a great feel for the story and you can go back to review the vast statistical data behind the story. I find it a good way to read a complex book. reading lots of detail at my age can put me to sleep and listening to lots of statistical data causes me to miss things. Doing both reading and listening is a lot like taking a class in the subject. I find it very fulfilling. I think this was a really worthwhile and informative read. I highly recommend it. I'm reading his short book on energy now. I'll let you know how it goes.
November 3, 2022
If I ever try to listen to a book like this as an audiobook again, then please slap me. A great way to fall asleep, but not much else.
It did give me a great shrimp fact though, which I can't remember at the moment.
So this book goes through how much energy everthing takes to create, how we create energy, how much we need and what advancements has been made.
All good. Now try to just listen to the numbers instead of seing them in front of you.
Yeah. Doesn't work that well.
So I'm giving it three stars. Mostly since I actually finished it and it is my own fault for listening to it and not reading it. The audio experience was two stars, but what can you expect. So I'm betting reading it would have been at least three stars.
It did give me a great shrimp fact though, which I can't remember at the moment.
So this book goes through how much energy everthing takes to create, how we create energy, how much we need and what advancements has been made.
All good. Now try to just listen to the numbers instead of seing them in front of you.
Yeah. Doesn't work that well.
So I'm giving it three stars. Mostly since I actually finished it and it is my own fault for listening to it and not reading it. The audio experience was two stars, but what can you expect. So I'm betting reading it would have been at least three stars.
March 23, 2023
This book is clear, and an excellent example of the author's book. I was a little disappointed with the significant overlap with some of his other titles, Energy and Civilization, and especially How the World Really Works. I would recommend this book mainly if you haven't read How the World Really Works. The focus on grand transitions in a variety of societal development areas, energy, agriculture, population, and economics give the overall arc of the book a unique focus. However, the details of many of these areas are covered in his other books.
Despite the repetition, Smil has a very clear thesis and makes his point using a large number of quantitative examples. If you don't like numbers, you will probably not enjoy Smil's books.
Despite the repetition, Smil has a very clear thesis and makes his point using a large number of quantitative examples. If you don't like numbers, you will probably not enjoy Smil's books.
January 25, 2024
Vaclav Smil má obdivuhodný přehled a v knize vás zahrne milionem čísel, dat, odkazů a citací. Občas je až nemožné udržet vše v hlavě, i když by člověk moc chtěl. Spousta věcí, které Vaclav dává do souvislostí a časového rámce mi otevřela oči - netušil jsem jakých úžasných věcí jsme dosáhli a jak rychle!
Ohledně prognóz do budoucna je zdravě zdrženlivý, zpochybňuje cíle, za kterými se teď některé státy honí (nebo to tvrdí;), ale zároveň nevidí vše jako jednu velkou katastrofu ani růžovou zahradu. Nečte se to snadno (těch čísel je fakt hodně), ale je to opravdu dobré. Počítám, ze do toho ještě mnohokrát znovu kouknu, abych měl třeba shrnutí dat k nějakému tématu…
Ohledně prognóz do budoucna je zdravě zdrženlivý, zpochybňuje cíle, za kterými se teď některé státy honí (nebo to tvrdí;), ale zároveň nevidí vše jako jednu velkou katastrofu ani růžovou zahradu. Nečte se to snadno (těch čísel je fakt hodně), ale je to opravdu dobré. Počítám, ze do toho ještě mnohokrát znovu kouknu, abych měl třeba shrnutí dat k nějakému tématu…
October 14, 2024
I have witnessed the unfortunate Grand Transition of an author once known for being intelligent, largely unbiased, focused, and engaging into an incoherent, biased, and restless figure. There's a noticeable undertone of white supremacy, with condescending remarks towards the Chinese, Indians, and Eastern European nations. Even when acknowledging their successes, it is always followed by a 'but' that highlights their perceived shortcomings. Regrettably, Vaclav has become isolated and cynical, offering data that few care about while unfairly criticising other authors outside his field of expertise.
April 17, 2022
A BLIZZARD OF STATISTICS, BALANCED VIEWS. There is a lot in this book. Most of the book reads like an academic paper but the last chapter brings it all together. A like how Smil looks at all the different aspects / data relating to a topic and gives a comprehensive set of views on the way one could interpret that data. As opposed to cherry picking data to fit a predetermined narrative, which he calls out several well known commentators for doing just that. I love Smil’s work, the only thing holding me back from giving a 5 is the readability of the book.
March 26, 2023
Pro mne hrozně náročná kniha, kterou jsem po kapitolách trávil několik měsíců. Povinné čtení pro každého, kdo chce rozumovat o ekologii, ekonomii, biozemědělství, průmyslu 4.0, atp. Samá ošklivá a suchá fakta, případně jasně popsané nedostatky fakt a současných metodologií.
V závěrečné kapitole pak sarkastické komentáře nešetří ani hlasatele apokalypsy, ani na druhou stranu optimistické vyznavače singularit, cirkulárních ekonomik a další blouznivce.
V závěrečné kapitole pak sarkastické komentáře nešetří ani hlasatele apokalypsy, ani na druhou stranu optimistické vyznavače singularit, cirkulárních ekonomik a další blouznivce.
March 31, 2022
Overall outstanding book on socio economic transitions of food, energy, climate...this is a thorough scientific work with over 40 pages of references, so not your easy-to-digest read but definitely worth the read if you are curious about the identification of global problems. personally, I have enjoyed this book and could understand why Bill Gates is a fan of Soil.
June 19, 2022
The past few centuries have been characterized by grand transitions in demography, food production, energy use, economic growth, and the environment, transitions that have both raised our living standards unimaginably and brought the very biosphere that supports us to the brink of collapse. Where we go from here depends very much on our choices.
July 14, 2022
We take our modern world for granted. For example, it's unfathomable how much time and energy it took to produce just one loaf of bread a hundred years ago.
Vaclav Smil looks at the important transitions that give us the world we have today: population, agriculture and diet, energy, economy and environment.
Like his other books, this is a firehouse of data.
Vaclav Smil looks at the important transitions that give us the world we have today: population, agriculture and diet, energy, economy and environment.
Like his other books, this is a firehouse of data.
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