World-renowned scientist Vaclav Smil examines a critical topic in the research and policy domain of sustainable resource use

Over the course of time, the modern world has become dependent on unprecedented flows of materials. Now even the most efficient production processes and the highest practical rates of recycling may not be enough to result in dematerialization rates that would be high enough to negate the rising demand for materials generated by continuing population growth and rising standards of living.

Materials and Dematerialization considers the principal materials used throughout history, from wood and stone, through to metals, alloys, plastics and silicon, describing their extraction and production as well as their dominant applications. The evolving productivities of material extraction, processing, synthesis, finishing and distribution, and the energy costs and environmental impact of rising material consumption are examined in detail, along with the relationship between socio-economic development and resource use, including major technological and innovation aspects. The book concludes with an outlook for the future, discussing the prospects for dematerialization, potential constraints on materials, and an updated appraisal of material requirements and prospects during the coming decades.

Building on the success of his 2013 book, Vaclav Smil has thoroughly revised this landmark text to highlight advances that have taken place over the last decade, including a thorough review of statistics and references to 2022. This updated edition also includes new content to explicitly address material for global energy transition and for securing food for a still growing global population.

Praise for the 1^st edition

“Vaclav Smil keeps turning out amazing books. Making the Modern World, I just finished, and it’s pretty fantastic.” (Interview with Bill Gates, January 2014)

‘There is no author whose books I look forward to more’ Bill Gates

The New York Times bestselling author returns with a mind-opening exploration of how size defines life on Earth.

Explaining the key processes shaping size in nature, society and technology, Smil busts myths around proportions – from bodies to paintings and the so-called golden ratio – tells us what Jonathan Swift got wrong in Gulliver’s Travels – the giant Brobdingnagian’s legs would buckle under their enormous weight – and dives headfirst into the most contentious issue in ergonomics: the size of aeroplane seats.

It is no exaggeration to say this fascinating and wide-ranging tour de force will change the way you look at absolutely everything.

From the New York Times bestselling author of How the World Really Works, a wide-ranging look at the most fundamental governing principle of our world: size, whose laws, limits, and peculiarities offer the key to understanding health, wealth, and even happiness

“No one writes about the great issues of our time with more rigor or erudition than Vaclav Smil.” — Elizabeth Kolbert

To answer the most important questions of our age, we must understand size. Neither bacteria nor empires are immune to its laws. Measuring it is challenging, especially where complex systems like economies are concerned, yet mastering it offers rich rewards: the rise of the West, for example, was a direct result of ever more accurate and standardized measurements.

Using the interdisciplinary approach that has won him a wide readership, Smil draws upon history, earth science, psychology, art, and more to offer fresh insight into some of our biggest challenges, including income inequality, the spread of infectious disease, and the uneven impacts of climate change. Size explains the regularities—and peculiarities—of the key processes shaping life (from microbes to whales), the Earth (from asteroids to volcanic eruptions), technical advances (from architecture to transportation), and societies and economies (from cities to wages). This book about the big and the small, and the relationship between them, answers the big and small questions of human existence:

• What makes a human society too big? What about a human being?
• Which alternative energy sources have the best chance of scaling and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels?
• Why do tall people make more money?
• What makes a face beautiful? How about a cathedral?
• How can changing the size of your plates help you lose weight?

The latest masterwork of “an ambitious and astonishing polymath who swings for fences” (Wired) Size is a mind-bending journey that turns the modern world on its head. 

From the New York Times-bestselling author, a new volume on the history of human ingenuity—and its attendant breakthroughs and busts.

The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most readable book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI. He reminds us that even after we go quite far along the invention-development-application trajectory, we may never get anything real to deploy. Or worse, even after we have succeeded by introducing an invention, its future may be marked by underperformance, disappointment, demise, or outright harm.

Drawing on his vast breadth of scientific and historical knowledge, Smil explains the difference between invention and innovation. He then looks at three different types of inventions.

Inventions that failed to dominate as promised:

• Airships
• Nuclear fission
• Supersonic flight

Inventions that turned disastrous:

• Leaded gasoline
• DDT
• Chlorofluorocarbons

Inventions we have long been promised (and that would be highly beneficial):

• Travel in vacuum (hyperloop)
• Nitrogen-fixing cereals
• Nuclear fusion

Finally, he offers a “wish list” of inventions that we most urgently need to confront the staggering challenges of the twenty-first century.

Filled with engaging examples and pragmatic approaches, this book is a sobering account of the folly that so often attends human ingenuity—and how we can, and must, better align our expectations with reality.