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Size

Size

How It Explains the World

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

100 words: 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.

10 words: Size, an omnipresent scalar, is the measure of all things.

1 word: Size.

© Vaclav Smil 2023 (P) Penguin Audio 2023

Reviews

  • Vaclav Smil is a phenomenon with an appetite for facts over prejudice and fashion. Essential reading for anyone who cares about the future
    eminent architect, Lord Norman Foster

About the author

Vaclav Smil

Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of over forty books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy. No other living scientist has had more books (on a wide variety of topics) reviewed in Nature. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.
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