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Brought to you by Penguin.

We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check - because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts.

In this ambitious and thought-provoking book we see, for example, that globalization isn't inevitable - the perils of allowing 70 per cent of the world's rubber gloves to be made in just one factory became glaringly obvious in 2020 - and that our societies have been steadily increasing their dependence on fossil fuels, making their complete and rapid elimination unlikely. For example, each greenhouse-grown supermarket-bought tomato requires the equivalent of five tablespoons of diesel oil for its production, and we still lack any commercially viable ways of making steel, ammonia, cement or plastics at required global scales without fossil fuels.

Vaclav Smil is neither a pessimist nor an optimist, he is a scientist; he is the world-leading expert on energy and an astonishing polymath. This is his magnum opus and is a continuation of his quest to make facts matter. Drawing on the latest science, including his own fascinating research, and tackling sources of misinformation head on - from Yuval Noah Harari to Noam Chomsky - ultimately Smil answers the most profound question of our age: are we irrevocably doomed or is a brighter utopia ahead? Compelling, data-rich and revisionist, this wonderfully broad, interdisciplinary masterpiece finds faults with both extremes. Looking at the world through this quantitative lens reveals hidden truths that change the way we see our past, present and uncertain future.

© Vaclav Smil 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Critics Review

  • Very informative and eye-opening in many ways

    Ha-Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

  • It is reassuring to read an author so impervious to rhetorical fashion and so eager to champion uncertainty . . . Smil’s book is at its essence a plea for agnosticism, and, believe it or not, humility – the rarest earth metal of all. His most valuable declarations concern the impossibility of acting with perfect foresight. Living with uncertainty, after all, “remains the essence of the human condition.” Even under the most optimistic scenario, the future will not resemble the past

    New York Times

  • A grumpy, pugnacious account that, I would argue, is intellectually indispensable in the run up to this year’s COP27 climate conference in Egypt. In short, How the World Really Works fully delivers on the promise of its title. It is hard to formulate any higher praise

    New Scientist

  • You can agree or disagree with Smil – accept or doubt his ‘just the facts’ posture-but you probably shouldn’t ignore him . . . In Smil’s provocative but perceptive view, unrealistic notions about carbon reduction are partly, and ironically, attributable to the very productivity that societies achieved by substituting machine work, powered by fossil fuels, for draft animals and human laborers

    Washington Post

  • This accessible and witty book cuts to the chase of what we need to know

    The Bookseller, 'Editor's Choice'

  • If you are anxious about the future, and infuriated that we aren’t doing enough about it, please read this book

    Paul Collier, author of The Future of Capitalism

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