How the World Really Works

Vaclav Smil’s How the World Really Works is a dispassionate, data intensive and at times cryptically verbose look at several key forces that shape modern life, including energy, agriculture, globalization and climate change. Smil hits the reader with a good dose of reality regarding how unlikely the rapid decarbonization of transportation and power grid is without significant changes in the standard of living. He also provides a fascinating chapter on how we should look at risks in everyday life using statistical analysis. Smil has described his work as a “dull, factually correct and accurate middle” as “ from that middle will come the solutions.”