We live in a time of great change and the orders of magnitude of change are very hard to fathom. In "How the Modern World was Made" Vaclav Smil gives an overview of where change has been most pronounced, how to measure the orders of magnitude and what have been the consequences of such vast change to the environment we live in. The book is steeped with facts to the extent that one can get lost with the citations, but it is a combination of optimist and pessimist which is really a true realist about where we are and how to think about the future. It is a must read for those interested in the effective history of the Anthropocene.
Most of Professor Smil's works are extremely information rich with abundant citing of related material. This is no exception and is probably more filled with detailed facts and figures than his other books. This makes the book dry at times and one can sometimes forget exactly what the conclusions are meant to be. But despite the details being overwhelming at time for the more casual reader, the book is coherent and Smil always brings back the major points after substantiating his arguments. The book is split into 7 chapters detailing the significant transitions. Smil first discusses the population changes on the planet through human history with a focus on the exponential rise in the 20th century and some perspective on the curve for the 21st century, the author discusses all that was needed to sustain such population growth and details the consequences to ecology as a function of enormous population growth. The author moves on to the change in agriculture and our diets which is the natural extension of the discussion on population growth. The food chain processing leading to our modern diets requires enormous energy and unprecedented agricultural requirements as protein based diets require much more agriculture than what previous civilizations needed. The author then moves into our energy needs of which agriculture has been a major demand source, the author discusses the magnitude of energy needs relative to historic needs which is astounding. It is often overlooked how much our energy needs are and realistically what infrastructure and sources are needed to supply such needs, especially with a desire for a cleaner energy production. Smil discusses the practical reality of what we face and what solutions look like and how unrealistic techno optimists are. The author discusses the size of modern economies, the needs of the city and the changes to the factors of production over time and the sheer scale of global output from countries like China on a relative basis to the past. He also discusses the changes in size of the economy of countries like China vs others over the last 30 years and the spillover consequences to the environment and resource demands. The author then moves on to the environment and gives great detail to the ways in which humanity is affecting the environment. It is not optimist and purely factual and has much concern about the idea that technology will just solve our problems. The author is not a pessimist on humanities outlook but given all of the content of the book he highlights the scale of the issues at stake are enormous and productivity gains for the economy are nothing like and have never been like Moore's Law. The author moves onto translating all of this into a perspective on the future and is even handed in his analysis. He highlights the multitude of issues we face as a species and the uniqueness of the problems in the context of history.
Overall Grand Transitions is extremely informative. For information the book is definitely a 5 star book. The only criticism is that it can sometimes seem like there are too many references in the sense that the reader might be looking for the authors opinions and conclusions not the abundance of literature out there who has also discussed the same topics. As such the book has more content than necessary to be a discussion on the subject at hand. Despite that criticism the book really is worthwhile to read as the subject matter is extremely important and the author's perspective is extremely well informed.
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Top reviews from other countries
Andrew C
Always amazing books from Professor Smil
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 9, 2021
