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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.
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)
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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- Stephen
- 05-25-21
Strange book
70 some chapters on energy, population etc.. Smil distills large complex topics to their mathematical essence and you feel enlightened. The problem is, they are large complex topics for a reason. Throughout I was thinking "yeah but" there is so much missing. With short zingers on big things, it's easy to leave out contradictory information. It's entertaining and interesting, but reality is complex. Smil is at his best in live lectures, from which many of these chapters derive, too bad he couldn't narrate.
13 people found this helpful
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- becky
- 05-08-21
might be my #1 recommended book for 2021
Loved this book. Answers so many .... uh ..... seemingly random questions but does so in a logical manner with the numbers and research and math to back it up. If you need one book outside of your normal genre this year, this one should be it. So if you've ever wondered what's worse for the environment: your car or your cell phone or what height has to do with quality of life or how many of your modern conveniences were developed in the 1880s or how happiness is measured, then pick up this book. It's short and sweet with "potato chip" chapters. We aren't quite halfway through the year yet, but this might turn into my #1 recommended book of 2021. Vitally important information here.
5 people found this helpful
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- Spencer Perry
- 05-20-21
First VS Book I Could Wrap My Head Around
I've picked up a few of Smil's books and audiobooks over the years, but I've not been able to finish many (due to my own mental/attention span limitations). This book was very easy to follow and finish due to the structure of the chapters and the great performance by Ben Prendergast. If you're looking for a great book that will expose you to new ideas, test your assumptions, and help you plan for the future, you can do no better than 'Numbers Don't Lie".
4 people found this helpful
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- Dana Preis
- 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.
2 people found this helpful
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- Simoun
- 11-01-21
Inferior version of freakonomics
Same idea using numbers to explain things or events but identified subjects are quite trivial and explanations and insights are even more so with very little value - leaving you with the question of what’s the point the author is trying to share across? I find myself rewinding and relistening to the recording trying to figure out the point where often there really isn’t any. Just some near random numbers.
1 person found this helpful
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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
1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 08-28-21
Not really a book. Definitely not an audiobook.
A collection of columns.
Doesn't work as a book.
Full of references to the pdf.
Not enjoyable as an audiobook.
1 person found this helpful
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- Brent
- 08-07-22
A mildly interesting podcast
At best, this could have been a podcast. Really, though, it’s things I might ask Siri to get me answers for, and then forget.
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- Mohammad Pour-Ghaz
- 07-30-22
First and last book from Smil
This book reminds me of my late grandmother who complained about everything without really understanding it. It is very unfortunate that the author only points to the imperfection of all systems and methods; I found it also very surprising that an author of this fame does not even understand the principles of market economy and the fact that economic freedom is a necessary prerequisite of political freedom . My advise to VS is to read some Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell.
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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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Overall
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Energy is humanity's single most important resource. In fact, as energy expert Michael E. Webber argues in Power Trip, the story of how societies rise can be told largely as the story of how they manage energy sources through time. In 2019, as we face down growing demand for and accumulating environmental impacts from energy, we are at a crossroads and the stakes are high. But history shows us that energy's great value is that it allows societies to reinvent themselves.
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A History of Energy for Everybody
- By Brian Shivers on 08-14-19
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More from Less
- How We Learned to Create More Without Using More
- By: Andrew McAfee
- Narrated by: Andrew McAfee
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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A compelling argument - masterfully researched and brilliantly articulated - that despite increasing prosperity for most of Earth’s inhabitants and an explosion of goods overall, consumption of natural resources such as metals, water, and timber has begun to decline. Best-selling author and codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy Andrew McAfee says there’s a new reason for optimism: We’re past the point of "peak stuff" - from here on out, it'll take fewer resources to make things and fewer dollars to lead a comfortable life.
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Imperfect sound quality.
- By Anonymous User on 10-13-19
By: Andrew McAfee
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Fueling Freedom
- Exposing the Mad War on Energy
- By: Stephen Moore, Kathleen Hartnett White
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In Fueling Freedom, energy experts Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White make an unapologetic case for fossil fuels, turning around progressives' protestations to prove that if fossil fuel energy is supplanted by "green" alternatives for political reasons, humanity will take a giant step backwards and the planet will be less safe, less clean, and less free.
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Really a super book for understanding oil and the green mythology
- By Michael Cook on 01-22-21
By: Stephen Moore, and others
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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
- The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
- By: Bill Gates
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton, Bill Gates
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Gates shares what he's learned in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address the problems, and sets out a vision for how the world can build the tools it needs to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. Bill Gates explains why he cares so deeply about climate change and what makes him optimistic that the world can avoid the most dire effects of the climate crisis. Gates says, "We can work on a local, national, and global level to build the technologies, businesses, and industries to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
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Be curious, not furious
- By Axel Merk on 02-20-21
By: Bill Gates
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Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper
- How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong
- By: Robert Bryce
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In this provocative and optimistic rebuke to the catastrophists, Robert Bryce shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is providing consumers with Cheaper and more abundant energy, Faster computing, Lighter vehicles, and myriad other goods. That same desire is fostering unprecedented prosperity, greater liberty, and yes, better environmental protection.
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Best Energy Path to the Future
- By Dell on 07-09-14
By: Robert Bryce
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Power Hungry
- The Myths of 'Green' Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future
- By: Robert Bryce
- Narrated by: Ax Norman
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The promise of green jobs and a clean energy future has roused the masses. But as Robert Bryce makes clear in this provocative book, that vision needs a major re-vision. We cannotand will notquit using carbon-based fuels at any time in the near future for a simple reason: they provide the horsepower that we crave. The hard reality is that oil, coal, and natural gas are here to stay.
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Important but Imperfect
- By Michael on 08-13-13
By: Robert Bryce
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Apocalypse Never
- Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
- By: Michael Shellenberger
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die", contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.
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Science
- By Radish Bliss on 06-30-20
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Fully Automated Luxury Communism
- By: Aaron Bastani
- Narrated by: Shaun Grindell
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A different kind of politics for a new kind of society - beyond work, scarcity, and capitalism.
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Way better than I thought
- By David Larson on 12-08-20
By: Aaron Bastani
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Wasted
- How We Squander Time, Money, and Natural Resources-and What We Can Do About It
- By: Byron Reese, Scott Hoffman
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Waste. We spend a great deal of energy trying to avoid it, but once you train your eyes to look for it, you’ll see it all around you - in your home, your business, and your everyday life. In Wasted, futurist Byron Reese and entrepreneur Scott Hoffman take readers on a fascinating journey through this modern world of waste, drawing on science, economics, and human behavior to envision what a world with far less of it - or none of it at all - might look like.
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Imagining a World without Waste & Creating It
- By SurferDoug on 06-19-21
By: Byron Reese, and others