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![Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World by [Vaclav Smil]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51-oF4iWqUL._SY346_.jpg)
Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World Kindle Edition
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'My favourite author has done it again. Numbers Don't Lie is by far his most accessible book to date, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about the world. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning' Bill Gates
Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy?
From Earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge lazy thinking. Smil is on a mission to make facts matter, because after all, numbers may not lie, but which truth do they convey?
'Smil's title says it all: to understand the world, you need to follow the trendlines, not the headlines. This is a compelling, fascinating, and most important, realistic portrait of the world and where it's going' Steven Pinker
'The best book to read to better understand our world. It should be on every bookshelf!' Linda Yueh
'There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil' Guardian
Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of over forty books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment and public policy. No other living scientist has had more books (on a wide variety of topics) reviewed in Nature. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. This is his first book for a more general readership.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin
- Publication date1 October 2020
- File size21019 KB
Product description
Review
The best book to read to better understand our world. Once in a while a book comes along that helps us see our planet more clearly. By showing us numbers about science, health, green technology and more, Smil's book does just that. It should be on every bookshelf! -- Linda Yueh, author of The Great Economists
Important -- Mark Zuckerberg, on Energy
One of the world's foremost thinkers on development history and a master of statistical analysis . . . The nerd's nerd ― Guardian
A book for anyone confused by statistics or dubious of data in a world where numbers seem to mean everything and nothing. Vaclav Smil's new book reveals why diesel isn't as bad as you think, how much food is really being wasted, what actually makes people happy, and much more. ― BBC Science Focus magazine --This text refers to the paperback edition.
About the Author
Book Description
Product details
- ASIN : B084DKCQHG
- Publisher : Penguin (1 October 2020)
- Language : English
- File size : 21019 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 362 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 9,583 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He completed his graduate studies at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague and at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy) and the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He has been an invited speaker in more than 250 conferences and workshops in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Africa, has lectured at many universities in North America, Europe and East Asia and has worked as a consultant for many US, EU and international institutions. His wife Eva is a physician and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.
Official Website: www.vaclavsmil.com
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My huge reservation is that the author does not just stick to numbers (unlike the engrossing book The Universe Speaks in Numbers by Graham Farmelo). He is especially vituperative about the UK, see quote below* where personal prejudice seems to show through, and he does not mention the massive advances, both in power contribution and much lowered costs, made in off-shore wind by the UK - contrary to many previous expectations by so-called world experts.
Also, in his measure of countries' worth he does not think to consider the merits of countries simply willing to stand against tyranny: the UK would rate highly in this regard with its prolonged start-to-finish fights against both the Nazis and the Soviet Union. We were, history shows, a very minor player in the defeats of these twin evils but we at least did try and were there slinging a few stones as best we could well before other stronger players "bravely" entered the fight.
There may here be a current relevance with our small efforts to stand out against and call out the EU State, and that may be a reason for his particular animus, as Smil has been I think an adviser to the EU.
*"The UK has become....a deindustrialized and worn out country; another has-been power whose claim to uniqueness rests on having too many troubled princes and on exporting costumed TV series set in fading country mansions staffed with too many servants."
I in fact entirely agree with his withering assessments of both our ghastly princes and our TV series, but his bias shows bleakly though in such subjective statements.
Maybe Covid-19 adds an interesting aspect as well: the one vaccine both conceived and manufactured in the UK may well be the one to "save the world". I am not referring to the financial delusions of a former prime minister here, but the fact that the result of the Oxford/Astra collaboration is by far the easiest to handle (will safely sit in a fridge in a small store in Chad beside the Coca-Cola and root beer cans) and also by far the cheapest ($4 contra the $20-30 cost of the other leading sorts). Also the much maligned, utterly dreadful UK has agreed to make this available to the Developing World at zero profit for ever - no other country has come near to promising that. This will no doubt all just be put down to a massive fluke, but perhaps the author might reasonably consider that the UK has 5 universities in the world's top rank of 20 [QS Rankings], then some balance might just prevail. The entire EU scores NULL points in this particular Eurovision category!
Perhaps Balfour's aphorism (slightly modified) that "there are lies, a significantly higher order of lies, and then there are numbers", might merit further thought.

He mentions (correctly) that UK GDP per capita is less than Ireland's, but fails to mention that it is more than that of Spain, Italy or Japan
But Brexit was not about economics but about sovreignty. It has already meant that the UK led Europe (and indeed most of the world) in getting covid jabs into arms because the prime minister could ring up Kate Bingham and ask her to take on the job of vaccine Tsar, and could negotiate sensibly with Astra Zeneca. The UK has one of the premier financial centres in the world which we would rather regulate ourselves, and a single Cambridge college (Trinity) has more Nobels (34) than Italy or the Netherlands (20 each). Our Queen probably has more soft power than almost anyone else on earth. Even in sport, Britain won more golds at the recent Tokyo than the next two European powers (Netherlands and France) combined, and a similar pattern is developing in the paralympics. We aren't wonderful but we aren't a has-been either

One third of the topics well-argued would, to me, have made more sense. But that's just my opinion, and...

Overall, a great book that touches on an impressive range of areas with success, there will always be some disagreements when tackling such a broad area. However, that minor downside does not detract from the book and what it achieves, especially in comparison to books which try to do the same.

None of the depth I'm used to from this excellent author, more like headlines and short articles.
I'm already a fan of Smil, so I trusted the numbers he quoted and the context in which they were presented, even though they went against my previously held principles. For example, we learn here that eating meat is ok in moderation, electric cars aren't a good idea unless your country's electricity grid is green-powered. Wind turbine generators use almost as much carbon to manufacture as they produce.
However, he still asserts current global warming is on an unprecedented scale and caused by humans. There are 71 such assertions made here.
This is an excellent entre into Smil's work. Any of these topics can be seen is massive detail in his previous works.