Smil Vaclav. Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World

Penguin UK, 2020. — 362 p. — ISBN 9780241989708, 0241989701.«My favourite author has done it again. Numbers Don't Lie is by far his most accessible book to date, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about the world. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning» Bill Gates.Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy?From Earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge lazy thinking. Smil is on a mission to make facts matter, because after all, numbers may not lie, but which truth do they convey?«Smil's title says it all: to understand the world, you need to follow the trendlines, not the headlines. This is a compelling, fascinating, and most important, realistic portrait of the world and where it's going» Steven Pinker.«The best book to read to better understand our world. It should be on every bookshelf!» Linda Yueh.«There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil» Guardian.Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of over forty books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment and public policy. No other living scientist has had more books (on a wide variety of topics) reviewed in Nature. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. This is his first book for a more general readership.People: The Inhabitants of Our World.
What happens when we have fewer children?
The best indicator of quality of life? Try infant mortality.
The best return on investment: Vaccination.
Why it’s difficult to predict how bad a pandemic will be while it is happening.
Growing taller.
Is life expectancy finally topping out?
How sweating improved hunting.
How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid?
Why unemployment figures do not tell the whole story.
What makes people happy?
The rise of megacities.
Countries: Nations in the Age of Globalization.
The First World War’s extended tragedies.
Is the US really exceptional?
Why Europe should be more pleased with itself.
Brexit: Realities that matter most will not change.
Concerns about Japan’s future.
How far can China go?
India vs. China.
Why manufacturing remains important.
Russia and the USA: How things never change.
Receding empires: Nothing new under the sun.
Machines, designs, devices: Inventions That Made Our Modern World.
How the 1880s created our modern world.
How electric motors power modern civilization.
Transformers—the unsung silent, passive devices.
Why you shouldn’t write diesel off just yet.
Capturing motion—from horses to electrons.
From the phonograph to streaming.
Inventing integrated circuits.
Moore’s Curse: Why technical progress takes longer than you think.
The rise of data: Too much too fast.
Being realistic about innovation.
Fuels and electricity: Energizing Our Societies.
Why gas turbines are the best choice.
Nuclear electricity—an unfulfilled promise.
Why you need fossil fuels to get electricity from wind.
How big can a wind turbine be?
The slow rise of photovoltaics.
Why sunlight is still best.
Why we need bigger batteries.
Why electric container ships are a hard sail.
The real cost of electricity.
The inevitably slow pace of energy transitions.
Transport: How We Get Around.
Shrinking the journey across the Atlantic.
Engines are older than bicycles!
The surprising story of inflatable tires.
When did the age of the car begin?
Modern cars have a terrible weight-to-payload ratio.
Why electric cars aren’t as great as we think (yet).
When did the jet age begin?
Why kerosene is king.
How safe is flying?
Which is more energy efficient—planes, trains, or automobiles?
Food: Energizing Ourselves.
The world without synthetic ammonia.
Multiplying wheat yields.
The inexcusable magnitude of global food waste.
The slow addio to the Mediterranean diet.
Bluefin tuna: On the way to extinction.
Why chicken rules.
(Not) drinking wine.
Rational meat-eating.
The Japanese diet.
Dairy products—the counter-trends.
Environment: Damaging and Protecting Our World.
Animals vs. artifacts—which are more diverse?
Planet of the cows.
The deaths of elephants.
Why calls for the Anthropocene era may be premature.
Concrete facts.
What’s worse for the environment—your car or your phone?
Who has better insulation?
Triple-glazed windows: A see-through energy solution.
Improving the efficiency of household heating.
Running into carbon.
Epilogue.
Further Reading.