About this item
"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author ... Numbers Dont Lie takes everything that makes his writing great and boils it down into an easy-to-read format. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning."--Bill Gates, GatesNotes. From the author of How the World Really Works, an essential guide to understanding how numbers reveal the true state of our world--exploring a wide range of topics including energy, the environment, technology, transportation, and food production.. Vaclav Smils mission is to make facts matter. An environmental scientist, policy analyst, and a hugely prolific author, he is Bill Gates go-to guy for making sense of our world. In Numbers Dont Lie, Smil answers questions such as: Whats worse for the environment--your car or your phone? How much do the worlds cows weigh (and what does it matter) ? And what makes people happy? . From data about our societies and populations, through measures of the fuels and foods that energize them, to the impact of transportation and inventions of our modern world--and how all of this affects the planet itself--in Numbers Dont Lie, Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge conventional thinking. Packed with fascinating information and memorable examples, Numbers Dont Lie reveals how the US is leading a rising worldwide trend in chicken consumption, that vaccination yields the best return on investment, and why electric cars arent as great as we think (yet) . Urgent and essential, with a mix of science, history, and wit--all in bite-sized chapters on a broad range of topics--Numbers Dont Lie inspires readers to interrogate what they take to be true.
About the Author
Ph. D. (Geography, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of Pennsylvania State University, 1971; RNDr. , Charles University, Prague, 1965) , is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2010 was named by as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.
