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Numbers Don't Lie
- 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World
- Narrated by: Ben Prendergast
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's summary
"There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil." (Bill Gates)
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 Smil's 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 Don't Lie, Smil answers questions such as: What's worse for the environment - your car or your phone? How much do the world's 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 Don't Lie, Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics to challenge conventional thinking. Packed with fascinating information and memorable examples, Numbers Don't 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 aren't 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 Don't Lie inspires readers to interrogate what they take to be true.
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Critic reviews
“The human mind soaks up the images and narratives conveyed by the press, but they are a highly nonrandom sample of reality: the lurid, the sudden, the photogenic. Smil’s title says it all: To understand the world, you need to follow the trendlines, not the headlines. This is a compelling, fascinating, and most important, realistic portrait of the world and where it’s going.” (Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now)
“[A] tidy, entertaining collection of brief inquiries into a host of hot-button topics.... Throughout, Smil’s viewpoint is balanced, and each element of the text is fully backed by research as well as the author’s contagious curiosity. Even when examining dire circumstances, Smil keeps readers engaged. A fascinating book to be read straight through or consulted bit by bit.” (Kirkus)
“[Smil] presents a robust array of data, at times with devastating acuity.” (Publishers Weekly)
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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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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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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 Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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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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Animal, Vegetable, Junk
- A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal
- By: Mark Bittman
- Narrated by: Mark Bittman
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of humankind is usually told as one of technological innovation and economic influence—of arrowheads and atomic bombs, settlers and stock markets. But behind it all, there is an even more fundamental driver: Food. In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, trusted food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of how the frenzy for food has driven human history to some of its most catastrophic moments.
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Mostly Junk
- By Daniel Ducat on 05-22-21
By: Mark Bittman
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The Ages of Globalization
- Geography, Technology, and Institutions
- By: Jeffrey D. Sachs
- Narrated by: Steve Menasche
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Today's most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future. But humanity's story has always been on a global scale. Sachs takes listeners through a series of seven distinct waves of technological and institutional change, starting with the original settling of the planet by early modern humans through long-distance migration and ending with reflections on today's globalization.
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Narrator.
- By ROGER QUESADA on 08-03-20
By: Jeffrey D. Sachs
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The Vertical Farm
- Feeding the World in the 21st Century
- By: Dickson Despommier
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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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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Coal
- A Human History
- By: Barbara Freese
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.
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Uses Coal to push her Political Agenda
- By Kismet on 08-22-06
By: Barbara Freese
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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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Overall
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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 Vanishing Face of Gaia
- A Final Warning
- By: James Lovelock
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, British scientist James Lovelock predicts global warming will lead to a Hot Epoch. Lovelock is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia theory in the 1970s, with Ruth Margulis of the University of Massachusetts, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. We ignore this interaction at our peril.
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A New Perspective - A Must Listen - Very Moving
- By Thomas on 01-29-12
By: James Lovelock
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Green Metropolis
- What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability
- By: David Owen
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, David Owen argues that the greenest community in the United States is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York City.
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A stupid and dangerously short sighted view
- By Gare&Sophia on 11-13-12
By: David Owen
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Abundance
- The Future Is Better Than You Think
- By: Steven Kotler, Peter H. Diamandis
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Space entrepreneur turned innovation pioneer Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, digital manufacturing synthetic biology, and other exponentially growing technologies will enable us to make greater gains in the next two decades than we have in the previous 200 years.
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Perhaps multiply his time estimates by 10
- By Rick on 11-06-21
By: Steven Kotler, and others
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Not the best from Vaclav, but near the top
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Not a good format for this book
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Size
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Worth a read
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PDF should come with this book...
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Let me save you a credit: progress is hard
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Not the best from Vaclav, but near the top
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By: Vaclav Smil
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Grand Transitions
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Nihil novum sub soli
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Not a good format for this book
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Worth a read
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PDF should come with this book...
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In this book, Vaclav Smil argues that power density is a key determinant of the nature and dynamics of energy systems. Any understanding of complex energy systems must rely on quantitative measures of many fundamental variables. Power density—the rate of energy flux per unit of area—is an important but largely overlooked measure. Smil provides the first systematic, quantitative appraisal of power density, offering detailed reviews of the power densities of renewable energy flows, fossil fuels, thermal electricity generation, and all common energy uses.
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A Different Look at the Pros and Cons of Renewable Energy and Fossil Fuels
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first half was good
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Beyond Infinity
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Maybe for children, but not for me
- By Scott on 04-13-17
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In this user-friendly and informative audiobook, prolific author and academic Vaclav Smil provides an introduction to this far-reaching term and gives the reader a greater understanding of energy's place in both past and present society. Starting with an explanation of the concept, he goes on to cover such exciting topics as the inner workings of the human body, and the race for more efficient and environmentally friendly fuels.
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Listening to the Encyclopedia of Energy
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The Ten Equations That Rule the World
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This book is all about the equations that make our world go round. Ten of them, in fact. They are integral to everything from investment banking to betting companies and social media giants. And they can help you to increase your chance of success, guard against financial loss, live more healthfully, and see through scaremongering. They are known by only the privileged few - until now.
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A poorly crafted attempt to leverage mathematics to justify a sociopolitical perspective
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The Universe Speaks in Numbers
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One of the great insights of science is that the universe has an underlying order. The supreme goal of physicists is to understand this order through laws that describe the behavior of the most basic particles and the forces between them. For centuries, we have searched for these laws by studying the results of experiments. Since the 1970s, however, experiments at the world's most powerful atom-smashers have offered few new clues. So some of the world's leading physicists have looked to a different source of insight: modern mathematics.
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Great story and narration, but lacks rigor...
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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
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Business Adventures
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Interesting book
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Good as an intro, skip if you’re a wonk
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The Information
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James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: A revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality - the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born.
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Brilliant book, heroic reader, better in print?
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Limitless Mind
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In this revolutionary book, a professor of education at Stanford University and acclaimed math educator who has spent decades studying the impact of beliefs and bias on education, reveals the six keys to unlocking learning potential, based on the latest scientific findings.
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Title does not reflect audience
- By Oliver Nielsen on 05-02-20
By: Jo Boaler
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Infinite Powers
- How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
- By: Steven Strogatz
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- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves. Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes "backwards" sometimes; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.
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Not written to be read aloud
- By A Reader in Maine on 02-21-20
By: Steven Strogatz
What listeners say about Numbers Don't Lie
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- jaga
- 08-22-21
No hot air, just data!
This book is well written, useful and important. I love how Smil supports everything he says with hard data and includes a lengthy PDF with the audio program which further supports his points. We live in a day and age where our biggest challenge is often figuring out fact from fiction. This is not a challenge with Smil’s book. Above and beyond this, there is a tremendous amount of interesting information and ideas presented. For example, instead of simply presenting the elimination of meat from our diets as a solution to global warming, Smil discusses (with data!) how a relative shift from beef to chicken and pork consumption could positively impact the environment. I would like to see more of this approach in our governmental policy discussion as it is much more practical and thus likely to lead to success. In the end, understanding our world is the single biggest factor in figuring out how to make it better. Smil makes a strong positive step in assisting with that understanding.
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- Chris Buckner
- 08-19-21
loved it
One of those books you want to listen to over and over again. 👏 👏
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- Tawny Melon
- 09-08-21
Must- read book.
This is an absolutely fascinating book that gives it's readers a real window into the global challenges we are facing in the 21st century.
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2 people found this helpful
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- alikabok1966
- 07-21-22
6 hours of mental illumination
If you hate facts, then you would not like this book.
People, whose prejudices are hardened already, will hate this book.
If you value facts, data and the most balance truth that humans are capable of, then this book is a joy, almost karmic.
If you appreciate, context, then this book is for you.
One of the most humble, yet, tour de force, summary of how the modern world works.
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- Nick
- 04-03-24
Great book, poor narration
The reading style of the narrator doesn't fit the content. There are moments of odd intonation and expression that would better fit other genres. One mispronunciation stands out, "Lie ion" for lithium ion.
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- melo drifter
- 01-25-22
Lots of facts, not much connection
While many snippets were informative there was no definable pattern or point to the book.
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- David Brochu
- 12-28-23
legit unheard of point of views
for a car listeners a more complete pdf for visual review would really help a lot
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- Anshuman Anand
- 09-04-21
Must read for everyone
Random data has never been so interesting . There’s so much data around but I have come across such fascinating presentation
Cannot stop thinking about this book
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1 person found this helpful
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- James
- 09-05-21
Fascinating stuff, but a bit dry
There wasn’t really much of a through line. Also, constantly having to refer back to the PDF for context defeats the purpose of an audiobook and I just had a kind of assumed that the information I would’ve seen supported whatever the premise was at the time. It was still quite interesting, but I think the experience could’ve been more enjoyable with a few tweaks to the structure and the injection of just a little more sarcasm or humor.
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- G. Rivas
- 01-14-22
Great book that will bring you closer to reality
Great book that will bring you closer to reality. It will make you think and guide you on how to use numbers to better understand where are we coming from and where are we heading.
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