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Energy and CivilizationBook

by Vaclav Smil, 2017

Who uses, recommends or left Energy and Civilization, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

2 people

Balaji Srinivasan
Investor and writer; former CTO of Coinbase, author of The Network State, and founder of Network School.
recommended

Foundation, The Lessons of History, Unqualified Reservations, A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Selfish Gene, Albion's Seed, War and Peace and War, Stalin's War, Energy and Civilization, Who We Are and How We Got Here, The Ancient City, The Fourth Turning, The Grey Lady Winked

The draft reading list for his Network School, in the “Macrohistory” section.

2025-02-02·balajis.com ↗

Alex Telford
Writes about the biotech industry, drug development and forecasting
recommended

For a history of energy, I recommend Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization

Footnote in his essay on innovation theory and the economics of nature

2022-09-14·atelfo.github.io ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.