Grand Transitions
How the Modern World Was Made
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Narrated by:
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Robert Fass
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By:
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Vaclav Smil
About this listen
What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization - in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics - that have transformed the way we live.
Societies that have undergone all four transitions emerge into an era of radically different population dynamics, food surpluses (and waste), abundant energy use, and expanding economic opportunities. Simultaneously, in other parts of the world, hundreds of millions remain largely untouched by these developments.
Through erudite storytelling, Vaclav Smil investigates the fascinating and complex interactions of these transitions. He argues that the moral imperative to share modernity's benefits has become more acute with increasing economic inequality, but addressing this imbalance would make it exceedingly difficult to implement the changes necessary for the long-term preservation of the environment. Thus, managing the fifth transition - environmental changes from natural-resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and global warming - will determine the success or eventual failure of the grand transitions that have made the world we live in today.
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- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. The vertical farm has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. These farms, grown inside skyscrapers, would provide solutions to many of the serious problems we currently face.
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Excellent Brainstorming - Not reality
- By Texas Community Project on 01-25-11
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The Industrial Revolution
- A Captivating Guide to a Period of Major Industrialization and the Introduction of the Spinning Jenny, the Cotton Gin, Electricity, and Other Inventions
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Jason Zenobia
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For most of human existence, people lived in a somewhat similar fashion. Everything that has been produced, from food and raw materials to clothing and other finished products, has been done either solely by hand or with some help of animal power. This was the same across the eras and throughout the world, no matter how advanced or backward the various civilizations were. Yet, our lives today couldn’t be more different.
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Excellent introduction
- By H. Paavilainen on 09-26-21
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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Work
- A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots
- By: James Suzman
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Work defines who we are. It determines our status and dictates how, where, and with whom we spend most of our time. It mediates our self-worth and molds our values. But are we hardwired to work as hard as we do? Did our Stone Age ancestors also live to work and work to live? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like? To answer these questions, James Suzman charts a grand history of "work" from the origins of life on Earth to our ever more automated present, challenging some of our deepest assumptions about who we are.
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if you like Jared Diamond's work, you'll like this
- By Mark on 04-09-22
By: James Suzman
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Fossil Future
- Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing--including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right.
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Strongly Recommend
- By Kevin on 06-14-22
By: Alex Epstein
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The Technology Trap
- Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
- By: Carl Benedikt Frey
- Narrated by: Richard Lyddon
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members.
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Very good
- By Brad on 07-04-19
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Artificial Intelligence
- Modern Magic or Dangerous Future?
- By: Yorick Wilks
- Narrated by: Hannibal Hills
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies, and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life and how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come.
By: Yorick Wilks
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The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For decades environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We're taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives.
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A different point of view
- By Ballofyarn on 01-12-17
By: Alex Epstein
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The Rise and Fall of American Growth
- The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War
- By: Robert J. Gordon
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 30 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from 45 to 72 years. The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides an in-depth account of this momentous era.
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Over-detailed, with no engaging message
- By BehA on 01-31-17
By: Robert J. Gordon
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Not the best from Vaclav, but near the top
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Let me save you a credit: progress is hard
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Listening to the Encyclopedia of Energy
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From the plains of ancient Mesopotamia to the rolling hills of medieval England to the vast sheep farms of modern-day Australia, sheep have been central to the human story. Starting with our Neolithic ancestors' first forays into sheep-rearing nearly 10,000 years ago, these remarkable animals have fed us, clothed us, changed our diet and languages, helped us to win wars, decorated our homes and financed the conquest of large swathes of the earth.
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I couldn't stop talking about sheep after reading
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Oil
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Without oil, there would be no globalisation, no plastic, little transport, and a global political landscape that few would recognise. It is the lifeblood of the modern world, and humanity’s dependence upon it looks set to continue for decades to come. In this captivating audiobook, Vaclav Smil explains all matters related to ‘black gold’, from its discovery in the earth, right through to the political maelstrom that surrounds it today.
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Absolutely Masterful! Comprehensive yet succinct.
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How to Feed the World
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We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food. In this ambitious, myth-busting book, Vaclav Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today.
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Have you ever wondered how off-key you are while singing in the shower? Or if your Bob Dylan albums really sound better on vinyl? Or why certain songs make you cry? Now, scientist and musician John Powell invites you on an entertaining journey through the world of music. Discover what distinguishes music from plain old noise, how scales help you memorize songs, what the humble recorder teaches you about timbre (assuming your suffering listeners don’t break it first), and more.
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Nearly everyone will get something out of this!
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Religion in Human Evolution
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Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.
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extremely biased
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Tom Standage's fleet-footed and surprising global histories have delighted fans and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Now, he returns with a provocative account of an overlooked form of technology - personal transportation - and explores how it has shaped societies and cultures over millennia. Beginning around 3,500 BCE with the wheel - a device that didn't catch on until a couple thousand years after its invention - Standage zips through the eras of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how each successive mode of transit embedded itself in the world we live in.
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Great listen
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The Neanderthals Rediscovered
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In recent years, the common perception of the Neanderthals has been transformed, thanks to new discoveries and paradigm-shattering scientific innovations. It turns out that the Neanderthals' behavior was surprisingly modern: they buried the dead, cared for the sick, hunted large animals in their prime, harvested seafood, and communicated with spoken language. Meanwhile, advances in DNA technologies are compelling us to reassess the Neanderthals' place in our own past.
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Fascinating Subject... Soporific Reader
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By: Dimitra Papagianni, and others
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Origin Story
- A Big History of Everything
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
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A brilliant achievement, must read/listen
- By 11104 on 09-05-18
By: David Christian
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The Heart
- By: Maylis de Kerangal, Sam Taylor - translator
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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The Heart takes place over the 24 hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
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Wow! What a story!
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What listeners say about Grand Transitions
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- mynameisgerry
- 12-05-23
Vaclav Smil is the best data scientist
Unparalleled clarity in this analysis; interesting; engaging and bery well cited and researched. The most comprehensive account of climate change challenges
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- Dan Ziemer
- 06-28-22
Thorough
Nobody I know covers their subjects as thoroughly as Bacliv Smil - and he does so in a manner that invites thought and contemplation long after the book is finished.
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1 person found this helpful
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- jaga
- 04-17-22
A BLIZZARD OF STATISTICS, BALANCED VIEWS
There is a lot in this book. Most of the book reads like an academic paper but the last chapter brings it all together. A like how Smil looks at all the different aspects / data relating to a topic and gives a comprehensive set of views on the way one could interpret that data. As opposed to cherry picking data to fit a predetermined narrative, which he calls out several well known commentators for doing just that. I love Smil’s work, the only thing holding me back from giving a 5 is the readability of the book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sam J.
- 08-29-22
Nihil novum sub soli
This is one of the most difficult-to-read books I’ve put myself through lately because of the torrential cascade of measurements, numbers, dates, percentages, and rates of change committed to pages for “funzies”. If you come to accept the data that Smil is proposing as true, it is hard to argue with his parting conclusion of “there is nothing new under the sun” because despite being a data agglomeration of sorts, this is really a historical view of humanity condensed to just numbers. If you can tolerate that, you know what you’re getting by choosing to read this. It’s an anthropologist data history book.
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- A. Bailey
- 04-12-23
A fantastic peak at the potential future...
Fantastic exposition of how we got to where we are, and a great guide to where we may be headed.
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- Stephen Esch
- 05-07-23
Very academic book
Struggled listening to this book. it really feels like an academic diatribe about some factoids. Not really sure this is what I signed up for. Was expecting something totally different.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-31-24
Narrator sucks
Interesting factual information and logical format…. Horrible narrator. Made me want to read the Bible starting at the beginning and pushing all the way through while getting kicked in the balls and poked in the eyes the whole time rather than listen to the guy read the book. Should be fired and black listed, if not a covid casualty already.
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