Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Energy and Civilization PDF full book. Access full book title Energy and Civilization by Vaclav Smil. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Vaclav Smil Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262536161 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 564
Book Description
A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.
Author: Vaclav Smil Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262536161 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 564
Book Description
A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.
Author: Jane McIntosh Publisher: ISBN: 9780563488897 Category : Civilization Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
Civilizations takes the reader forward from the earliest days of human settlement to the civilizations of the New World overthrown by the Spanish Conquistadors.
Author: Hans-Joachim Gehrke Publisher: Belknap Press ISBN: 9780674047174 Category : Languages : en Pages : 1120
Book Description
From the History of the World series, Making Civilizations traces the origins of large-scale organized human societies. Led by archaeologist Hans-Joachim Gehrke, a distinguished group of scholars lays out latest findings about Neanderthals, the Agrarian Revolution, the founding of imperial China, the world of Western classical antiquity, and more.
Author: Carroll Quigley Publisher: Indianapolis : Liberty Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 454
Book Description
Carroll Quigley was a legendary teacher at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. His course on the history of civilization was extraordinary in its scope and in its impact on students. Like the course, The Evolution of Civilizations is a comprehensive and perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations. Quigley examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels from the abstract to the more concrete. He then tests those hypotheses by a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western. Quigley defines a civilization as "a producing society with an instrument of expansion." A civilization's decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution--that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs.
Author: Stephen L. Sass Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc. ISBN: 1611454018 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
Demonstrates the way in which the discovery, application, and adaptation of materials has shaped the course of human history and the routines of our daily existence.
Author: William McGaughey Publisher: Thistlerose Publications ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 630
Book Description
Based on the idea that communication technologies are a primary shaping force of civilizations, "Five Epochs of Civilization" presents a new scheme of world history. It identifies five epochs of historical experience and associates each with a civilization focused on particular institutions. These are: -- Civilization I focused on government, ending in large political empires -- Civilization II focused on religion, ending in the three world religions -- Civilization III focused on commerce and education within the nation state -- Civilization IV focused on the media of news and entertainment -- Civilization V focused on the internet and beyond The communication technologies which triggered these changes in culture (and their approximate dates of introduction) include: ideographic writing (3100 B.C.), alphabetic writing (800 B.C.), printing (1450 A.D.), electronic recording and broadcasting (1920 A.D.), and computer networks (1990 A.D.). McGaughey includes separate narratives for each of the four civilizations that have appeared to date in a developed form plus 'imaginative and plausible speculations concerning a possible fifth, computer-based civilization'.
Author: John Zerzan Publisher: Feral House ISBN: 1627310711 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
The American anarchist, primitivist philosopher, and author John Zerzan critiques agriculture-based civilization as inherently oppressive and advocates drawing upon the life of hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for what free society should look like. Subjects of his criticism include domestication, language, symbolic thought, and the concept of time. This book includes sixteen essays ranging from the beginning of civilization to today’s general crisis. Zerzan provides a critical perspective about civilization. A People’s History of Civilization includes chapters about: Patriarchy The City and its Inmates War Enters the Picture The Bronze Age The Axial Age The Crisis of Late Antiquity Revolt and Heresy Modernity Takes Charge Who Killed Ned Ludd Cultural Luddism Industrialism and Resistance Decadence WWI Civilization’s Pathological Endgame In recent years, John Zerzan, co-editor of Black and Green Review, has successfully toured Europe to speak from his primitivist perspective regarding contemporary civilization. Zerzan calls Eugene, Oregon
Author: Vaclav Smil
Author: Vaclav Smil
Author: Jane McIntosh
Author: Henry Thomas Buckle
Author: Hans-Joachim Gehrke
Author: François Guizot
Author: Carroll Quigley
Author: Stephen L. Sass
Author: William McGaughey
Author: Bernard Wasserstein
Author: John Zerzan