
Numbers Don't Lie
71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World
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Narrated by:
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Ben Prendergast
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By:
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Vaclav Smil
About this listen
"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.
©2021 Vaclav Smil (P)2021 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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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lots of dense information, hard to absorb.
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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.
-
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Nihil novum sub soli
- By Sam J. on 08-29-22
By: Vaclav Smil
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- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In Made in the USA, Vaclav Smil powerfully rebuts the notion that manufacturing is a relic of predigital history and that the loss of American manufacturing is a desirable evolutionary step toward a pure service economy. Smil argues that no advanced economy can prosper without a strong, innovative manufacturing sector and the jobs it creates. Smil assesses various suggestions for solving America's manufacturing crisis, including lowering corporate tax rates, promoting research and development, and improving public education. Will America act to reinvigorate manufacturing?
-
-
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-
Story
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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Part Encyclopedia
- By See Reverse on 12-18-17
By: Vaclav Smil
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Power Density
- A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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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
- By Anonymous User on 07-10-24
By: Vaclav Smil
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Bernoulli's Fallacy
- Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science
- By: Aubrey Clayton
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 15 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the 17th-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it.
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Rigorously Bayesian
- By Anonymous User on 01-25-22
By: Aubrey Clayton
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The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
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Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
By: Mustafa Suleyman, and others
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The Experience Machine
- How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
- By: Andy Clark
- Narrated by: Andy Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?
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About halfway through, it became propaganda
- By Jesse Helton on 08-13-23
By: Andy Clark
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Thinking in Systems
- A Primer
- By: Donella H. Meadows
- Narrated by: Tia Rider Sorensen
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....
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Skip to the Middle
- By John Chambers on 06-20-20
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21 Lessons for the 21st Century
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.
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Disappointing
- By Noah Lugeons on 09-11-18
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The Beginning of Infinity
- Explanations That Transform the World
- By: David Deutsch
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
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A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe.
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Worthwhile if you have the patience
- By Scott Feuless on 08-12-19
By: David Deutsch
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Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order
- Why Nations Succeed or Fail
- By: Ray Dalio
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Ray Dalio
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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From legendary investor Ray Dalio, author of the number-one New York Times best seller Principles, who has spent half a century studying global economies and markets, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order examines history’s most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically different from those we’ve experienced in our lifetimes - and to offer practical advice on how to navigate them well.
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Ray Dalio, Chinas New Minister of Propoganda
- By Dudley on 01-04-22
By: Ray Dalio
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
- By: Daniel Kahneman
- Narrated by: Patrick Egan
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The guru to the gurus at last shares his knowledge with the rest of us. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman at last offers his own, first book for the general public. It is a lucid and enlightening summary of his life's work. It will change the way you think about thinking. Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains....
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Difficult Listen, but Probably a Great Read
- By Mike Kircher on 01-12-12
By: Daniel Kahneman
No hot air, just data!
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loved it
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Must- read book.
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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.
6 hours of mental illumination
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Great book, poor narration
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Lots of facts, not much connection
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legit unheard of point of views
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started interestin...
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Cannot stop thinking about this book
Must read for everyone
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Fascinating stuff, but a bit dry
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