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    Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
    Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
    Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
    Audiobook26 hours

    Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

    Written by Vaclav Smil

    Narrated by Eric Jason Martin

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

    Smil takes listeners from bacterial invasions through animal metabolisms to megacities and the global economy. He begins with organisms whose mature sizes range from microscopic to enormous, looking at disease-causing microbes, the cultivation of staple crops, and human growth from infancy to adulthood. He examines the growth of energy conversions and man-made objects that enable economic activities-developments that have been essential to civilization. Finally, he looks at growth in complex systems, beginning with the growth of human populations and proceeding to the growth of cities.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateMar 31, 2020
    ISBN9781469073309
    Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
    Author

    Vaclav Smil

    Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the New York Times bestselling author of How the World Really Works, as well as more than forty other books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he has been named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.

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    Reviews for Growth

    4.5/5

    25 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Provides framing on how growth happens within biological conext and social structure context.

      Foundational book for any one interested in analysis of historical development of human civilization and especially those who are working on making current civilization more sustainable and equitable.
    • 4/5
      Exhaustive and exhausting (especially the first half) but very illustrative of growth patterns. I'ts not just hockey sticks everywhere like Diamandis or Kurzweil would have you think.