Creating the Twentieth Century

Why it’s on the list: Vaclav Smil’s argument that 1867–1914 was the most consequential burst of technical creativity in history — electricity, internal combustion, steel, synthetic ammonia, the telephone, modern chemicals and pharmaceuticals — and that almost everything we call modern elaborates what that one generation built.

Where I heard about it

• Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, in the section on the history of human civilization, listed back to back with its sequel Transforming the Twentieth Century. He cites the Oxford University Press 2005 edition.

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.