This edition first published 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smil, Vaclav.
Making the modern world : materials and dematerialization / Vaclav Smil.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-119-94253-5 (pbk.)
Waste minimization. Materials. Raw materials. I. Title.
TD793.9.S64 2014
306.3--dc23
2013024672
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781119942535
About the Author
Vaclav Smil conducts interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment and public policy. He has published more than 30 books and close to 500 papers on these topics. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy), the first non-American to receive the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology, and in 2010 he was listed by Foreign Policy among the top 50 global thinkers.
Previous works by author
China's Energy
Energy in the Developing World (edited with W. Knowland)
Energy Analysis in Agriculture (with P. Nachman and T. V. Long II)
Biomass Energies
The Bad Earth
Carbon Nitrogen Sulfur
Energy Food Environment
Energy in China's Modernization
General Energetics
China's Environmental Crisis
Global Ecology
Energy in World History
Cycles of Life
Energies
Feeding the World
Enriching the Earth
The Earth's Biosphere
Energy at the Crossroads
China's Past, China's Future
Creating the 20th Century
Transforming the 20th Century
Energy: A Beginner's Guide
Oil: A Beginner's Guide
Energy in Nature and Society
Global Catastrophes and Trends
Why America Is Not a New Rome
Energy Transitions
Energy Myths and Realities
Prime Movers of Globalization
Japan's Dietary Transition and Its Impacts (with K. Kobayashi)
Harvesting the Biosphere
Should We Eat Meat?
Preface: Why and How
The story of humanity evolution of our species; prehistoric shift from foraging to permanent agriculture; rise and fall of antique, medieval, and early modern civilizations; economic advances of the past two centuries; mechanization of agriculture; diversification and automation of industrial protection; enormous increases in energy consumption; diffusion of new communication and information networks; and impressive gains in quality of life would not have been possible without an expanding and increasingly intricate and complex use of materials. Human ingenuity has turned these materials first into simple clothes, tools, weapons, and shelters, later into more elaborate dwellings, religious and funerary structures, pure and alloyed metals, and in recent generations into extensive industrial and transportation infrastructures, megacities, synthetic and composite compounds, and into substrates and enablers of a new electronic world.