Creating the Twentieth Century

Vaclav Smil argues that the decades between 1867 and 1914 were the most consequential burst of technical creativity in history — electricity generation and transmission, internal combustion, steel, synthetic ammonia, the telephone, the prepared chemical and pharmaceutical industries — and that almost everything we call modern is an elaboration of what that single generation built rather than a departure from it. The companion volume, Transforming the Twentieth Century, carries the story forward; this one makes the case that the foundations were laid before the First World War.

Why it’s on the list: Li Lu’s first section treats technical capability as one of the engines of civilisational development, and Smil is the author there who insists on counting it — one of several authors the section lists twice in a row, this book and its sequel Transforming the Twentieth Century.

Where I saw it: Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, entry 19 of section I, cited as Oxford University Press, 2005. Full transcription: Li Lu’s Recommended Book List.

Connections

• Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the list this came from.
• Li Lu — the Himalaya Capital founder who assembled it.
• Vaclav Smil — the author.
• Energy and Civilization — Smil’s longer-arc account of the same material constraint.
• The Innovators — Isaacson on the later computing wave; Li Lu lists it in his value-investing section.
• Innovation — the concept the book is trying to date precisely.