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Energy and Civilization: A History

Vaclav Smil

4.10 · Rating details · 1,648 ratings · 241 reviews

A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel-driven civilization.

Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrop ...more

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Hardcover, 568 pages

Published May 12th 2017 by The MIT Press

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Feb 06, 2020 Mario the lone bookwolf rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 0-humanities

The book covers each aspect from ancient times, fire, energy in form of stored food, forging until the more modern approaches and shows how the combination of different technologies enabled us to go from the primitive beginning of fuelling ourselves with nourishment to enable us to tinkle with fusion and includes aspects of other natural sciences to form a super read.

As an interdisciplinary scientist, Vaclav draws an astonishing, metascience picture of Big History that opens up so many questions The book covers each aspect from ancient times, fire, energy in form of stored food, forging until the more modern approaches and shows how the combination of different technologies enabled us to go from the primitive beginning of fuelling ourselves with nourishment to enable us to tinkle with fusion and includes aspects of other natural sciences to form a super read.

As an interdisciplinary scientist, Vaclav draws an astonishing, metascience picture of Big History that opens up so many questions, both on possible developments, alternative developments and uchronias that depended on coincidences and how technology and resources, and not the humans, formed human history.

With renewable energy and better technology, there might come the point when an abundance could change the balance of power and it´s dynamics so that many industries won´t work anymore with business as usual, but let the revolution wait for some time. Because this amazing author tells the awful truth one more time, we can´t get out of fossil energies fast enough, it´s impossible.

But it´s not just the technological singularity, the acceleration and higher efficiency of harvesting energy, but the sweet exponential growth too. Not the machines, that can be built by any state as soon as the economic and technological circumstances allow it, but the extreme advantage of any state that has invested energy in building its infrastructure and industry hundreds of years earlier than others. That race is impossible to win if one enters it too late.

Of course, there could be brute-force attempts with primitive technology in vast scales to produce as much or even more energy than someone with advanced tech, but the uselessness and short-time thinking of wasting huge amounts of government funding in any technology with an expiration date, or even an outdated or dangerous technology, instead of investing in alternatives, improvements, innovations, and research is obvious. I mean, who would, lol, you certainly rofl know what I facepalm mean.

Because each region of the world has it´s geographical, seasonal and political advantages and disadvantages, a global power grit is one of the most attractive options in the future to be able to change to renewable energy.

We don´t really know much about alternative physics, alternate energy forms such as dark energy and dark matter, black holes, gravity, space anomalies, mirror and alternative universes with different physics, chemistry and elements, supernovas, gamma-ray bursts, unknown forms of matter, energy and elements, etc., and understanding and using those energy sources with highly advanced future tech, including self-manufacturing, grey goo, 3D printing, AI, etc. may be able to switch the balance of power in a way never possible.

Even a tiny population of just a few million that has the luck to be the home of the genius that understands or engineers may be unbeatable overnight, because all that energy can be simply used for warfare too. Or, in a closer and more realistic future, to enable everyone from a family home to a community and a state to be independent because of abundant available, alternative physical and biological energy forms. A big difference to a history in which the good or bad luck of natural resources and technological development defined the wealth and power of a nation.

That´s interesting regarding the Kardashew Scale because it shows how ridiculously less energy we are able to harvest and use and what potential lies both in the manipulation of physics and old-school collecting of power. There are fascinating concepts about how anything from suns to black holes over all kinds of stars and space anomalies could be used, farmed and created to get endless energy in scales so huge to build anything, megastructures, habitats, whole planets, the creativity, and imagination are the only limits.

It is highly specific and detailed, the book covers any aspect possible and so some skimming and scanning may be appropriate.

A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardash...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_... ...more

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Jul 27, 2018 Charlene rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biology, chaos-complexity-emergence, constructs, ecology, evolution, favorites, politics, technology, mindgasms, climate

Now that I am done reading this book, I plan to start at chapter one again. My head was filled with so much information, I am positive my brain has not yet ingested nearly the number of treasures packed in this book. Smil does not gloss over facts or tell a story in the way many historians do. In this book, you will not find the kind of sweeping histories told in the captivating way Yuval Noah Harari brings to life in his book sapiens. Smil is not that kind of story teller. Telling the story Smi Now that I am done reading this book, I plan to start at chapter one again. My head was filled with so much information, I am positive my brain has not yet ingested nearly the number of treasures packed in this book. Smil does not gloss over facts or tell a story in the way many historians do. In this book, you will not find the kind of sweeping histories told in the captivating way Yuval Noah Harari brings to life in his book sapiens. Smil is not that kind of story teller. Telling the story Smil has told in his book, many historians might say something like:

How did humans build civilization? By using every ounce of energy they could get their hands on. Throughout history humans have used the energy stored in horses, in slaves, and in the machines they built. They stole energy from the sun (a lot of it), gaining them a share higher than seen in any other species. Humans harvested energy from the wind and water. They mined it from holes in the ground and sent it along railroads. From the dawn of civilization, humans coupled the energy from the sun, wind, and water with the energy (ATP) from the cells that reside in all living organisms (like slave and animal muscle) to build each aspect of civilization. Using this energy, in its various and wonderful forms, humans built villages, cities, and huge warring empires. They built food systems that fed and sustained incredible amounts of humans. Using energy, they built transportation systems to create a trade system that took on a life of its own and has transformed early humans into the modern humans of today. With that energy, they brought about the industrial revolution that gave humans more resources than they had ever imagined possible.

In order to set the stage for such a revolution, humans needed to stockpile a lot of energy along the way. Before the use of slaves and before the use of animals and machines to do work, humans spent all of their time harvesting just enough energy from nature to survive. That is to say, they were foraging for food, spending their energy roaming around, eating food to gain more energy to keep roaming around for food, and so on, using all the energy gained to keep the cycle in perpetual motion. No energy was left over for innovation. No energy was left over to build the great empires and cities that would be long in the future. Everything changed once humans switched from hunter gatherer strategies to trapping all that food in a smaller space, crops on farms, they produced more energy than they needed for mere survival. It was with the advent of agriculture that our civilization, for good or for bad, really emerged.

With this rapid advancement came about moral quandaries. There simply was no way to build early civilizations without slavery. From the earliest writings, we know that the very first laws ever constructed had to do with keeping the poor doing the work of the rich (who made the laws). It was just the way of life. When humans figured out that they could harvest the energy of non-human muscle, like the muscle power in horses, they used horses, meaning fewer humans had to donate their muscle energy. Slavery decreased (this was a fascinating aspect of this book and is something I want to spend more time thinking about-- how morality arose not from consciousness but from our energy needs!!!). When machines were finally build, horse muscles (horsepower) was replaced by machine power (still called horsepower). This reduced our need to use humans and animal muscle. Interestingly, humans began to focus more on human and animal rights only once they no longer needed their muscle power to bring about the advancement of their societies.

That is how a storytelling author might have written Smil's book.

Where Smil diverges from the story telling Harari's of the world is that he will not construct a story that flows, is easy to follow, where the facts are kept to a minimum. No, you will be overloaded with facts. Smil will not merely convey that there was a transfer of horsepower from horse muscle to machine energy output. He will tell you exactly how many Watts were harvested from horses, from slaves, from machines. Smil will do this on every page, and it will undoubtedly make this book much harder to read than other books. You will not be able to just sail along sinking into the type of daydream induced when reading deeply satisfying histories as told by authors like Harari. Your brain will have to constantly work to keep track of what these figures really mean for how energy transformed human existence from the prehistoric practices of hunting down one's food and roaming the earth to feed the human body to the advances we have witnessed so far, such as agriculture, the industrial revolution, the computer revolution, and conquering space, to the projected advances for the future of our species. You will have to ingest the extremely detailed facts and then remind yourself, constantly, where you are in the sweeping narrative. However, if you can do that, you experience reward beyond anything a more superficial book could produce. Smil's facts are relentless, but my god do they really drive home his points! I knew I would be interested in how much energy humans harvested from the power of water and the water-wheel driven mills that built our early modern cities or how much power it really took to build the pyramids (a much different answer than you will find from past experts), but never thought I would be interested in exactly how much energy humans could harvest from dung or whale oil. Turns out, I am very interested.

Smil examined the costs of the energy we harvest. For example, what happens when humans harvest so much energy from fossil fuels for so many years? We drive climate change/global warming on a very large scale. These are things we need to take into consideration as we decide exactly how we humans will go about harvesting energy in the future.

While reading this, I could not help but think of one scientist from the past who would have loved, so much, to have been alive to read this book. In 1944, Schrödinger asked, "What Is Life?". He answered that question by suggesting that life occurred when something went on resisting entropy longer than expected. That is, an organism is exceptional at creating a pocket of space in which energy is ingested and cycled. Schrödinger would have loved to have had access to Smil's data. Smil could have informed Schrödinger exactly how living organisms went about ingesting the energy from the sun or from the hot core of earth and how exactly those organisms went about cycling that energy. The entire reason I want to reread this book is to think deeply about how every single organism, from the first cells without mitochondria to the more advanced cells that captured it, from the first plants to boney fish, from tiktaalik to tree shrews to us and to Earth itself -- how each organism ingested, harvested, and repacked energy so that it could keep going on longer than expected. I don't just want to know that it did. I want to know exactly *how* it did.

Thank you Smil for this challenging, insightful, and exquisite book. ...more

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Aug 13, 2017 Aaron rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

Energy transitions take time. That's the big takeaway. That's the terrifying takeaway. This should be obvious if you sit down and think about it, but when we describe our economic history with phrases like "agricultural revolution" and "industrial revolution" we start getting ahead of ourselves. These revolutions took millennia and centuries.

And we only have decades before our planet burns. What revolution can we expect?

Smil shies away from those that would try to paint every with the brush of e Energy transitions take time. That's the big takeaway. That's the terrifying takeaway. This should be obvious if you sit down and think about it, but when we describe our economic history with phrases like "agricultural revolution" and "industrial revolution" we start getting ahead of ourselves. These revolutions took millennia and centuries.

And we only have decades before our planet burns. What revolution can we expect?

Smil shies away from those that would try to paint every with the brush of energy- art? war? politics? These are largely independent a civilization's energy usage. Yet, its energy usage and its economy might as well be one and the same. As energy is fed into a civilization, like a rainforest basking in the tropics, the kind of life inside diversifies, extends, and mutates to reach the limits that physics will allow.

The biggest invention in the history of humanity was the slow transition from using wood energy to using coal, oil, and gas. This transition increased the amount of energy available to any individual in the developed world by many magnitudes access to energy. This powered the economic growth following the world wars, and until the 1970s, the efficiencies of American produced cars were going down due to the cheapness of oil.

Of course, it is in the 1970s when economic growth in the developed world went from a joy ride to a car stuck in traffic. The reason: energy prices rose.

We now face an ecological problem brought on by our energy use, that threatens the economy that our energy use props up. There are two broad categories of solution: (1) limit our energy usage and (2) change our energy use.

Smil does not have much faith in the latter: over the course of the last fifty, or even fifteen, years the piece of the energy pie inhabited by renewables has hardly changed. To truly save much of civilization, we must get that number -15%- to near 100% within a few decades. We've never done that before is Smil's strongest argument.

But I would argue that this transition is different. For one, we know we have to make the change. The King of England wasn't telling Watt to invent a steam engine. No priest ever told the hunters and gathers to start domesticating animals. The Green Energy revolution, if we are to have one, is a planned revolution started from the bottom and the top.

Limiting our energy usage is obvious, but more contentious. We have to stop driving so many cars? Eat less meat? Stop building cheaply built McMansions with no insulation? These seem to be an affront to people's basic liberties, and yet every time they make these choices they help dig us a little bit deeper into carbon debt.

Smil's history is broad and deep. It reaches into the tiny fragments of Roman, Chinese and prehistory that you didn't know where out there. It discusses the differences between whether an ox or a horse are best on a farm, and what their energy efficiencies are relative to one another. He uses sharp illustrations makes clear that two 747 pilots control more energy than entire medieval communities would have had at their disposal.

Most of all, he provides the context for understanding today's economic and ecological problems that have resulted from our historical use of energy. ...more

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Dec 15, 2019 Kathleen rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: professional-devt

I realized that by the time you're listening to an audiobook as an insomnia cure, even if it was a recommendation, you should be finding something else to read. This is an exhaustive summary of Vaclav Smil's life's research on the history of energy transitions, but for all the information the book contains it is so terribly written that the barrage of facts (imagine listening to math formulas being read at you in a monotone) almost always overwhelms any potential meaning that could be drawn from ...more

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Apr 17, 2020 Daniel rated it it was amazing

An epic and well researched book by Smil.

Living organisms need to process energy and those which are most efficient, thrive. They can divert more energy to other important things, such as growing bug brains. Human beings walk on 2 legs because that is more energy efficient. Then we develop big brains that enable us to harness the use of more energy, like using tools and using draft animals, and making wind and water mills.

Energy availability limited the size of human settlements. Improvements ...more

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Aug 17, 2018 Brahm rated it really liked it

Recommended to Brahm by: Bill Gates

Shelves: history-thru-the-lens-of-x, hard-rec-nonfiction

I read this book because it was on Bill Gates' list, and his recommendations have not steered me wrong to date.

Smil's history of civilization, viewed through the lens of energy, was a challenging read; at times I was not fully engaged. The long chapter quantifying energy inputs and outputs in traditional, pre-industrial farming almost made me put the book down. For example, comparing the power output (in Watts) of two head-yoked oxen versus a bitted horse with a breastband harness... exciting fo I read this book because it was on Bill Gates' list, and his recommendations have not steered me wrong to date.

Smil's history of civilization, viewed through the lens of energy, was a challenging read; at times I was not fully engaged. The long chapter quantifying energy inputs and outputs in traditional, pre-industrial farming almost made me put the book down. For example, comparing the power output (in Watts) of two head-yoked oxen versus a bitted horse with a breastband harness... exciting for some, but not for me.

However, I am glad I stuck with it. Smil views all of human history through the lens of quantified energy, similar to how Fukuyama (The Origins of Political Order, Political Order and Political Decay) views all of human history through the lens of humanity's political institutions.

Smil's sticks to common units while accounting for different energy stores (Joules; food, steam, fossil fuels, etc) and methods of doing "work" or output (Watts; draft animal pulling power, watermill grinding capacity, work done by engines, electrical loads, etc), so one great takeaway is a reader can not only understand and compare apples to oranges in terms of energy, but apples to waterwheels, apples to horse-drawn plows, apples to Volkswagons, and apples to nuclear bombs.

When you get a sense of scale of the energy we're used to in Canadian life, it is all the more amazing (or shocking?). The poorest people in the world have access to a fraction of 1% of the per-capita energy consumption of North Americans. I have a better understanding of where global energy comes from (fossil fuels 84%, renewables just 1 or 2%) and where it is used (iron and steel production 7%). Smil is cautious about the future; he does not think our current path is sustainable. But, he sees fossil fuel use as a current necessity. While we could turn on our lights and bake our bread with renewables, they won't satisfy our need for metallurgical coke (a coal derivitive required for humanity's huge appetite for steel products) or natural gas (required for production of nitrogen that sustain our agricultural system at it's current levels; see the Haber process ) or plastics.

What I liked the most about this book was the viewing all of history through a narrow lens (energy). Smil is passionate about energy and argues in his conclusion it would be foolish to think about human history without accounting for energy. But I found myself thinking back to Fukuyama who would argue the same about political institutions, which is not in Smil's primary wheelhouse. The answer is likely in the middle; complex energy distribution systems (be it canals in ancient farming civilizations or modern electrical grids) are not possible without much human organization.

In the end, it's a different way of viewing the world that's interesting for me. I learned a lot! I hate to rate this book. It's 5 stars of knowledge and detail, but in terms of engagement I just wasn't as into it - so on the Goodreads scale, "I liked it" and that means 3 stars.

UPDATE: I am changing my review to 4 stars because I think about this book a LOT - it has great staying power. ...more

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Nov 24, 2020 Denar rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, social-theory, educational

This book is information-dense and your enjoyment of the book will most likely depend on your information conversion efficiency.

The only subjective complaint I have for the book is that there needs to be even more illustrations.

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Oct 26, 2019 Bouke rated it it was amazing

This book is very, very thorough. It goes through the whole history of how humans use energy, which is basically the whole history of human technological development. It is also very dense, no words are wasted on anecdotes or prose, but rather every sentence contains interesting information.

It is quite sobering, we need a lot of energy to maintain something close to our current standard of living and to improve the lives of the people currently living in squalor, but there's no easy way to achie ...more

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Nov 18, 2019 Jake rated it it was amazing

In this densely written text, Smil analyzes the history of energy utilization in civilization explaining in narrative form how human beings went from using the very limited energy produced from the skeletal- muscular system to modern day innovations such as cars, planes, rockets, and atomic bombs. In this narrative he presents a great variety of numbers breaking down textually how much more efficient modernity is from pre-steam/gasoline fueled civilization. Smil is no half assed scholar by any m ...more

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May 09, 2018 Alexander Curran rated it really liked it

“Despite many differences in agronomic practices and in cultivated crops, all traditional agricultures shared the same energetic foundation. They were powered by the photosynthetic conversion of solar radiation, producing food for people, feed for animals, recycled wastes for the replenishment of soil fertility, and fuels for smelting the metals needed to make simple farm tools. Consequently, traditional farming was, in principle, fully renewable.”

Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization: A History “Despite many differences in agronomic practices and in cultivated crops, all traditional agricultures shared the same energetic foundation. They were powered by the photosynthetic conversion of solar radiation, producing food for people, feed for animals, recycled wastes for the replenishment of soil fertility, and fuels for smelting the metals needed to make simple farm tools. Consequently, traditional farming was, in principle, fully renewable.”

Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization: A History book gives us a walkthrough history (Yes here we go again!) outlining how humans have managed and obtained energy beginning with pre-agricultural foraging societies working all the way to present day fossil fuel-driven civilization.
I will list the chapters to give any potential reader a precise feel and guide to what to expect as well in this rather informative book, giving Smil's pensive perspective with extensive research:
*1: Energy and Society
*2: Energy in Prehistory
*3: Traditional Farming
*4: Preindustrial Prime Movers and Fuels
*5: Fossil Fuels, Primary Electricity, and Renewables
*6: Fossil-Fueled Civilization
*7: Energy in World History

The first and second chapter detailed foraging societies, various processes and systems accompanying hunter-gatherer groups while heading towards the origins of agriculture.
While the third part deals with examples such as cropping cycles, irrigation, fertilization and crop Diversity. Smil certainly teaches the reader about the various dynamics behind cultivation farming and the amount of knowledge as well as practical work that comes with it. We have a look at Ancient Egypt, China, Mesoamerica Cultures, Europe, and North America. It gives the reader a taste of how these ancient civilisations regarding how agriculture garnered advanced techniques to feed and nourish their populaces.
The fourth chapter was again a flourish of information regarding wind power, hydropower, biomass fuels, wood and charcoal, transportation and construction, buildings and structures, metallurgy, warfare, explosives and guns, heat and light... And so on and so forth.
The fifth mainly gives us the industrial revolution with aspects such as coal extraction, steam engines, oil and electricity, renewable energies and various technical innovations.

Overall, Energy and Civilisation: A History is another book which gives us a very educational and detailed examination which correlates the progress of civilisations with energies obtained and the various stages we have seen in most civilisations, past and present, up to the current stage/level we find ourselves at. The later chapters also provide insight into economic growth, quality of life, weapons and war, environmental changes, patterns of energy use, imperatives of energy needs and uses and looking at aspects that haven't changed. Subsequently some changes have not been deemed necessary given the scale and cost effective nature which comes with industrious projects or indeed the farming industry.
I could see this book being a very useful addition for students and teachers whether they are economists, environmentalists or historians focused on the timeline of energy development, agricultural development and civilizational progress regarding technology and resources.

“Energy is not the only determinant of … life in general and human actions in particular…. [It is] among the most important factors shaping a society, but [it does] not determine the particulars of its successes or failures.” ...more

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Jul 14, 2020 Roel Debruyne rated it liked it · review of another edition

Very detailed and comprehensive, but also rambling and all over the place, with more than just a whiff of cultural pessimism.
In particular the second half of the book gets tedious and lost in too many lengthy descriptions of technological progress, written in a monotonous style.
Most important gap is the sheer absence of nuclear energy, except for a few brief asides. The author is not anti-nuclear power per se, but simply does not seem to believe in it, due to a lack of popular buy-in, without di ...more

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Aug 04, 2017 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, 20th-century, technology, 21st-century, world-history, academic, science, cultural-anthropology, non-fiction

Reading the origins of civilization in agriculture, religion, writing, and bureaucracy are typical, but here Vaclav Smil argues energy and its consequences was one of the most important elements of the emergence of civilization and the reason urban culture continues. However, it is also the most dangerous threat to our way of life.

An important book for anyone interested in the origins of civilization [urban culture]

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

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Jan 12, 2018 Peter O'Kelly rated it really liked it

A couple reviews to consider:

https://www.nature.com/articles/544029a

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Ener... ...more

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Oct 19, 2020 Raul Pegan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Absolutely incredible read. Highly recommend. This book chronicles the impacts and developments of energy use through all of humanity’s history. It is quite amazing to see how often subtle (and also not-so-subtle) discoveries in energy can have lasting impacts in history. From farming to war, everything ultimately is influenced by the ability to perform said actions, which is governed by efficient energy use. Of course, this book also covers the issue of CO2 emissions. The conclusion is bleak: w ...more

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Jan 25, 2020 John Devlin rated it liked it

So Vaclav’s thorough.

Let’s take the energy inputs and outputs of plowing animals. Horses are better than other ungulates bc their body mass is uncentered allowing for a better push pull; he has graphs.
Also, the collars used to pull the plows varied greatly in their efficacy, and horses saved up to ten percent of their energy bc of suspensory ligaments in their legs that allow them to lock in place and use little energy when standing still...who knew.

I’m not casting aspersions. The amount of rese ...more

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Sep 20, 2019 Clyde rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, non-fiction

A very good history from a unique point of view. Well written, well researched, well produced.
This is not predigested pap. The reader must put in some mental energy. You needn't read it in one go. It was my breakfast reading for a while. (I found it good to read a few pages and then think on what I had read.)
I recommend a paper version because this book contains numerous tables, illustrations, graphs, etc.. ...more

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Aug 14, 2020 Charleslangip rated it really liked it

I discovered this author whilst watching the documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" about Bill Gates. It revealed his massive intellectual man crush on this author's works so I thought I'd take a look.

It's a very impressive book about the impact of evolutions in energy usage & transmission, both in terms of the data & research that's gone into it, as well as the insights around how energy has been a massive factor in shaping civilizations. The scope of the book, across time and geographical regions, ...more

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May 05, 2020 Whisper19 rated it really liked it

So, in the end, a very interesting read. Different from most things I've read so far, but there were many moments when I went "huh, right"

If the prospect of reading a 400ish pages of numbers and percentages and Joules and Watts doesn't seem that attractive, read only the 7th chapter. It feels like he wrote this capter first, and then expanded the first half of the chapter into the book itself. But that chapter gives you a clear overview of the previous 400 pages and then proceeds to show you som ...more

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Feb 25, 2019 Ben rated it it was amazing

'Greater possessions and comforts have become equated with civilizational advances. This biased approach excludes the whole universe of creative - moral, intellectual, and aesthetic - achievements which have no obvious connection with any particular levels or modes of energy use: there has been no obvious correlation between the modes and levels of energy use and any 'refinement in cultural mechanisms.' But such energetic determinism, like any other reductionist explanation, is highly misleading ...more

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Dec 07, 2019 Taylor Pearson rated it really liked it

Shelves: tech, economics, history

I moved to Austin, Texas about a year ago. Since being in Texas, I've felt like it was time to actually learn how the energy business worked. Why is everyone so worried about this black sludge called oil? Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization: A History explains exactly why. The book walks through the historic role of energy in civilization beginning with manpower, followed by animals such as horse and oxen, and going on to water and wind then eventually coal, oil and nuclear as well as looking ...more

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Nov 17, 2019 Edilson Baloi rated it really liked it

It was an exceptional and interesting long read through this book. It is an in depth view of the evolution of civilisation on the different corners of the world being shaped by the usage of the different usage of energy resources.

It's definetly a recommendation for people looking to learn something new and have another scope on many topics. It's quite long and there is a lot of facts being dropped throughout the book.

Overall it's a great book and looking to read or listen on audible to other t ...more

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Jan 14, 2019 Robert Stevenson rated it really liked it

It is a book than can be quite monotonous due to its extensive energy statistics but it triggers many aha moments in contemplation.

Detailed Review:

For close to 30 years now we have seen history books that have moved away from comprehensive histories, reporting one dam thing after another to narrow single arc histories of novel narrative insight.

For me it was Daniel Boorstin who first popularized the effort by his trilogy history books focused on the great Creators, the great Seekers and the gre ...more

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Jun 16, 2020 K rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, economics, nonfiction, science, technology

Energy and Civilization is a rewrite of Smil's earlier book, Energy in World History. If I had to limit the book's aims and methods by assigning it a discipline, I would put it somewhere between the history of technology and anthropological ecology. In short, it details humankind's relationship to energy and energy tools - starting with hunting and gathering and ending with nuclear power and the world in the mid-2010s.

Smil's book contributes to understanding how energy plays a role in climate ch ...more

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Nov 22, 2020 Masatoshi Nishimura rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, history, technology

An excellent history book. It's not just ordinary history. I've read many innovation books in the past. But this by far has the strongest narrative when it comes to our technological relationship. What surprised me most was how well Vaclav describes technology, inventors, physics, and sociology all in one go. I was particularly impressed he's made sure to draw a progress line which makes him one hell of a futurist.

The true triumph of his claim is his study even dates back to prehistory. Who wou ...more

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Feb 13, 2021 Ben Rogers rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: People curious why coal is still being used

I found this book fascinating.

About the Book
Smil details what energy is, and how different civilizations harness it. He also outlines a bunch of opportunities for energy production and recommendations.

I had no idea a 500+ book about energy and civilization was going to be so engaging and interesting!

A Thank You
I would like to thank Bill Gates for recommending this book in his book recommendation website. I really enjoy reading his quarterly blog posts!

Excellent read. I really appreciated the p ...more

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Oct 27, 2019 Sophia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Dense and eye opening and epic.

Smil presents human history through the lens of energy; the limitations of human power and the unlocking of progress by new energy sources, like domesticated animals, wood, coal, coke, fossil fuels, and more. The author doesn't present energy as the end all be all, but I think energy is a factor in history that should't be ignored. If you want a better understanding of the leverage of energy, technological progress, and how unevenness of human innovation, I can't r ...more

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Dec 26, 2019 Rebecca rated it it was amazing

I really wanted to read this for the wisdom Smil would offer about where we are heading with energy use, consumption and global climate change. The reading is dense and full of well-referenced and researched explorations and analysis of the history of civilization through the lens of energy sources and use. Concepts such as "prime movers" and "energy transitions" recur as the relationships of energy sources, technological advances and population growth do their tango. There are abundant illustra ...more

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Dec 26, 2019 Richard Meehan added it

Seriously dense, but great read.

Summary premise "From a fundamental biophysical perspective, both prehistoric human evolution and the course of history can be seen as the quest for controlling greater stores and flows of more concentrated and more versatile forms of energy and converting them, in more affordable ways at lower costs and with higher efficiencies, into heat, light, and motion."

-he then goes on to do the math.

History, anthropology, science, technology and environment all in one. ...more

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Sep 21, 2020 Tarmo Tali rated it really liked it

I have a love-hate relationship with this book. In a way, it's brilliant and insightful, but occasionally it's as exciting read as a phonebook. Given a research-like nature, a neutral tone may be beneficial, but I have seen similar topics handled in much more palatable ways. So far, so good, I can live with that. What made me hate the book was the last third of it. It's a bite-sized rehash of the first 2/3 with no clear focus or goal. After getting the same fact shoveled to your face seventh tim ...more

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Jan 16, 2021 Richard Marney rated it it was amazing

Shelves: environment, science

An extraordinary work. The book reads like a well-written history, but stands on your shelf afterwards as an informative, easily accessible reference source.

The narrative takes the reader (even a non-technical soul like me) through the transition from phytomass to fossil fuels, and animate to mechanical power, and the profound effects of these transitions on the evolution of economics, politics and society.

It’s great to understand how we got here!

Well worthwhile!!

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About Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil

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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.

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Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate

Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization

Should We Eat Meat?: Evolution and Consequences of Modern Carnivory

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“Could such a shift be accomplished without eventually converting to a no-growth economy and reducing the current global population? For individuals, this would mean a no less revolutionary delinking of social status from material consumption.” — 1 likes

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