Download Growth : From Microorganisms to Megacities PDF
2019
Title | Growth : From Microorganisms to Megacities |
---|---|
Authors | Vaclav Smil |
Genres | Conservation Of The Environment Classical History / Classical Civilisation Development Economics Books |
Publisher | MIT Press |
ISBN | 9780262042833 |
A systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.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 readers 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. He considers the challenges of tracing the growth of empires and civilizations, explaining that we can chart the growth of organisms across individual and evolutionary time, but that the progress of societies and economies, not so linear, encompasses both decline and renewal. The trajectory of modern civilization, driven by competing imperatives of material growth and biospheric limits, Smil tells us, remains uncertain.
More Books You May Like
N Or M? by Agatha Christie
Tommy & Tuppence are hired to track down wartime spies at a seaside resort... It is World War II, and while the RAF stru...
Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
In a small North Carolina town, a mysterious and beautiful woman running from her past slowly falls for a kind-hearted s...
The Art of Fermentation
Winner of the 2013 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference and Scholarship, and a New York Times bestseller, The...
20th Victim
The Women's Murder Club face the fight of their lives in the latest thriller from the bestselling James Patterson series...
The Unhoneymooners
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal Named...