Promotional Information

A systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

Table of Contents

Preface
1 TRAJECTORIES or common patterns of growth
2 NATURE or growth of living matter
3 ENERGIES or growth of primary and secondary converters
4 ARTIFACTS or growth of man-made objects and their performances
5 POPULATIONS, SOCIETIES, ECONOMIES or growth of the most complex assemblies
6 WHAT COMES AFTER GROWTH or demise and continuity
CODA
References
Index

About the Author

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

Reviews

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