Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
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Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Vaclav Smil (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator), Gildan Media (Publisher)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 512 ratings
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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.

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  1. Listening Length
    26 hours and 15 minutes
  2. Author
    Vaclav Smil
  3. Narrator
    Eric Jason Martin
  4. Audible release date
    March 31, 2020
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Gildan Media
  7. ASIN
    B086H1SPCV
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 26 hours and 15 minutes
Author Vaclav Smil
Narrator Eric Jason Martin
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date March 31, 2020
Publisher Gildan Media
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B086H1SPCV
Best Sellers Rank #123,408 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#92 in Developmental Biology (Books)
#167 in History of Civilization
#179 in Biology (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
512 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A nice mix of theory
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2021
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In fact, this guy writes a lot of books in this style. There's an incredible amount of raw facts and there is still good support for the theory underneath whatever his topic is.
2 people found this helpful
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Eddie Choo
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent exploration
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2020
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Smil looks again at the extent of growth at all scales of life. An excellent summary if what growth entails and what it means. Does the growth of non-organic institutions resemble organic biological growth. Smil thinks so.
7 people found this helpful
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Eric N. Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars Why economic growth is a critical variable in understanding financial performance
Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2019
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Vaclav Smil retains his ability to separate the kernals of economic knowledge from the dross of pedestrian analysis.
6 people found this helpful
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TheHives
3.0 out of 5 stars Great information, reads like a college lecture
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2020
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I've only read the preface and about two chapters so far. This book is fairly dense. I've found it rewarding so far, but I knocked off two stars because the writing is extremely complicated and almost pretentious for what it's trying to convey.

At times, entire pages read like a rambling lecture from one of your college elective classes. There are sprinkles of interesting facts and observations with a huge number of citations, but the author almost comes across as a drunk fool. He doesn't write with a purpose. I found myself reading entire pages of rather dense material, where a single sentence goes on and on for at least 4 or more lines. There are many passages where there are no real "takeaways". There are sentences that could be ripped apart or stripped out entirely and the main idea explained in six or seven words without losing detail.

I don't want to accuse the author of anything, and I'll admit he excessively provides citations. But I gotta say – this book could be half its size if the author cut the bullshit. The complex writing is a delusion of grandeur. The reader is not better off by wasting time on these puzzles.
34 people found this helpful
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Chad M
5.0 out of 5 stars Types of growth
Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2021
Types of exponential in nature, population, energy sources or systems, and the factors for growth are described very precisely and broadly in this book. One type of exponential growth which is now in plateau form would be carbon uptake by oceans and rainforests. New conservation and ecosystem design projects can try to turn the "S" to a new exponential growth phase, even though this will be expensive for some countries.
New types of energy systems like pumped-hydro energy storage can achieve exponential growth in many of the mountainous countries. Solar thermal also has yet to see very strong exponential growth as most new solar is the photovoltaic type. Prof. Smil's books are very good for a precise understanding of our challenges.
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s3ops
5.0 out of 5 stars A narrative of dense, important information that leads to a spiritual conclusion.
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2020
I have been reading Smil books for about a decade now, and 'Growth' attempts to stimulate thought in the educated reader (I think the book's information is accessible to a certain demographic) by presenting variants of the exponential and logarithmic mathematical functions of various biological and human systems. Smil foresees a battle of the biosphere versus the human material apparatus in the near future. I think intelligent discussion of the contents of this book should be a selection factor for policy makers internationally.
7 people found this helpful
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E. N. Anderson
4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of big numbers....
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2021
If this book had come out when I was 12, I would have memorized it. It's got all the gee-whiz facts on the biggest, fastest, thickest, heaviest, strongest, whatever. I'm still adolescent enough to have devoured every page of it, but the adult in me kept asking "So what?" Outside of the occasional caution that we can't grow everything forever, there isn't much by way of conclusions here. It's a great reference but not a great read. Two points may give you some idea. First, he celebrates and duly gives all the numbers for the enormous explosion of information that's out there, but he doesn't bother to say that almost all of the increase is in things like online bank accounts, names of customers at shoe stores, and other stuff of no significance except to the immediate needs of the person posting it. Meanwhile, the countless bits of vitally important information about ecosystems and survival that were held among traditional and small-scale cultures are being lost at an appalling rate. In terms of actually useful information, we are losing far too much. Second, Smil duly celebrates on p. 499 “all machines and gadgets that make running a household incomparably less onerous that [sic, for than] a century ago”--well, OK, but as a field anthropologist I have spent seven years of my life without them, or without most of them, often without even electricity, let alone running water, and those were the happiest years of my life. The problem with modern machine civilization is that all those conveniences are always breaking down and needing expensive and difficult repairs. Yet I can't escape--I can't live now without a car, computers, etc. We have locked ourselves into a totally unsustainable world of "growth"--is it in the end like that other unchecked and uncontrolled growth known as cancer?
One person found this helpful
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Andrew Smith
3.0 out of 5 stars A list of growth rates
Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2021
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I gave up pretty early on this book. To be fair to the author, I'm not sure what I expected.

It's academic prose. The author has an encyclopedic grasp of growth rates and lists every single one of them, but doesn't often draw insights from them or offer interesting conclusions. He defines growth very broadly. Anything that changes in a way that can be measured and is increasing in count. Heart surgeries performed since the year 0. Is that growth? Yes. Is that raw number with noo added analysis or parallels drawn interesting? I found it dry.

By defining growth broadly and then listing "things that changed", the discussion becomes kind of boring and finding areas of interest or insight is an exercise left up to the reader.

If you enjoy reading a list of statements about the rate something changed over a period of time, you will enjoy reading the first few sections of this book, which is as far as I got.
9 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Natália Alves
5.0 out of 5 stars Ótimo
Reviewed in Brazil on May 15, 2022
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Lindo
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Dominika
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good.
Reviewed in Poland on February 16, 2023
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Brilliant.
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Martin Vesely
5.0 out of 5 stars A unique account on growth
Reviewed in Germany on June 12, 2022
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The book is a unique account on growth. Generally, widely know growth studies focus on economic systems and population. However, Mr. Smil book covers also growth trajectories of living matter and human artifacts (e.g. cars, electric generators etc.). Besides description of many growth trajectories, also basics of growth forecasting and linked issues are discussed. Personally, I value this discussions as often fitting techniques are applied blindly, mainly in social sciences, which leads to misunderstanding of reality.

As pointed out in other reviews in this book, sometimes, the text is reduced to listing numbers and dates. Although this can be boring for somebody, these parts are highly informative.

It seems that the book does not have any particular target audience. In my opinion, it could be attractive for anybody dealing with forecasting, persons interested in history of technology, economists etc. Similarly to wide range of knowlede presented in the book, the audience is also wide.
One person found this helpful
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Capi
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
Reviewed in Mexico on September 5, 2020
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Have you ever calculated the mass of all your current possessions and how that number compares to our earliest ancestors? Or did you know that trees are the oldest and most massive organisms living on this planet although strictly speaking more than half of their mass is dead? If you want to add a critical layer to the way you see and think about the world and your approach to everyday life you should read this amazing text of Professor Smil. Strictly analytical and fact-based, this book covers what a true polymath would be curious about regarding growth. Daunting, crude and extremely interesting. Vaclav Smil has always challenged our minds with deep understanding of human interactions with Earth’s biosphere. This book is no exception. A must read.
One person found this helpful
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Olivier
3.0 out of 5 stars All these curves, and no equations
Reviewed in France on August 30, 2021
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After many data-laden books that displayed his wide erudition, Vaclav Smil focuses his last book on the phenomenon that was the most visible in all these data: growth, and most particularly bounded growth. Always an erudite, the author presents first a zoo of mathematical curves that are used to model growth, and secondly a zoo of observed growth phenomena in a super-wide range of domains. So doing, the author makes one step in transforming data in knowledge, to go from temporal data to growth patterns.

However, he only makes one step, and I think this is not enough in a 600 page book. What is missing is a little bit of mathematics. For instance, the author speaks of "an asymmetrical (five-parameter) sigmoid" as if everybody could decypher that, but he never gives the equation nor explains what are those 5 parameters. In fact, the author gives the equation of only one curve, which is almost useless since it cannot be contrasted with the equations of other curves. It seems like the author is victim of the doing-maths-without-the-equations syndrom; it looks smart, but it tells nothing. The author could have spared a few pages of the total 600 to explain the maths of all these curves. It does not mean big maths, reserved for the few, but simply high-school maths. And it could even have served an urgent purpose: namely to reconcile the interest for the factful world and the interest for mathematics, especially at a high-school level.
2 people found this helpful
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