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.
...MoreReview Ruth Schwartz Cowan (July 2021) Review of "Growth: From microorganisms to megacities". Technology and Culture (pp. 916-917).
Review Sara Tjossem (July 2021) Review of "Growth: From microorganisms to megacities". Environmental History (pp. 613-615).
Book
Willem H Vanderburg;
(2016)
Our Battle for the Human Spirit: Scientific Knowing, Technical Doing, and Daily Living
(/isis/citation/CBB256350490/)
Book
Yuval N. Harari;
(2017)
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
(/isis/citation/CBB886774814/)
Book
LaDale C. Winling;
(2018)
Building the ivory tower: Universities and metropolitan development in the twentieth century
(/isis/citation/CBB917518873/)
Book
David H. 1927-(David Hodges) Stratton;
(2022)
Tucumcari tonite!: a story of railroads, Route 66, and the waning of a western town
(/isis/citation/CBB967373381/)
Article
Mann, Tamara;
(2013)
Old Cells, Aging Bodies, and New Money: Scientific Solutions to the Problem of Old Age in the United States, 1945--1955
(/isis/citation/CBB001201443/)
Article
Hannah Reeves;
(December 2020)
The place of peripheral “railway towns” in transport history
(/isis/citation/CBB221872194/)
Book
Lisa L. Denmark;
(2019)
Savannah's Midnight Hour: Boosterism, Growth, and Commerce in a Nineteenth-Century American City
(/isis/citation/CBB838378830/)
Article
Slavin, Philip;
(2014)
Warfare and Ecological Destruction in Early Fourteenth-Century British Isles
(/isis/citation/CBB001420328/)
Article
Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther;
Ryan Giordano;
Michael D. Edge;
Rasmus Nielsen;
(2015)
The mind, the lab, and the field: Three kinds of populations in scientific practice
(/isis/citation/CBB568872966/)
Article
Ramsden, Edmund;
Adams, Jon;
(2008-9)
Escaping the Laboratory: The Rodent Experiments of John B. Calhoun and Their Cultural Influence
(/isis/citation/CBB001032583/)
Book
Emily Brownell;
(2020)
Gone to ground : A history of environment and infrastructure in Dar es Salaam
(/isis/citation/CBB674765682/)
Book
Thomas Miller Klubock;
(2014)
La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile's Frontier Territory
(/isis/citation/CBB323338093/)
Article
Mohammad Imam Hasan Reza;
(2016)
Southeast Asian Landscapes Are Facing Rapid Transition: A Study in the State of Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia
(/isis/citation/CBB528467989/)
Book
John Lauritz Larson;
(2020)
Laid Waste! The Culture of Exploitation in Early America
(/isis/citation/CBB523556816/)
Book
Kay Etheridge;
(2020)
The Flowering of Ecology: Maria Sibylla Merian’s Caterpillar Book
(/isis/citation/CBB477782885/)
Book
Jason A. Josephson-Storm;
(2017)
The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB538974745/)
Book
Yuval N. Harari;
(2018)
21 lessons for the 21st century
(/isis/citation/CBB751849515/)
Book
Till Mostowlansky;
(2017)
Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity along Tajikistan's Pamir Highway
(/isis/citation/CBB178255256/)
Book
Anne Marie Balsamo;
(2011)
Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work
(/isis/citation/CBB272473814/)
Book
Yuval N. Harari;
(2015)
Sapiens: a brief history of humankind
(/isis/citation/CBB632692831/)
Be the first to comment!