Kyle Harrison
to-read
Energy and Civilization
Energy and Civilization: A History
- Author
- Vaclav Smil
- Published
- 2017
- Pages
- 568
- Recommended
- 2 times
Why it’s on the list: Smil’s history of human civilization told entirely through energy flows — the book most of the energy-and-growth argument is downstream of.
Where I saw it: @poorbjorn (BookLab by Bjorn) on X, February 9, 2026, on finishing it as his last read of 2025: “Love this book!”
Re-surfaced (recommendation #2) in the reply thread to @WillManidis asking “what is the single best book you can read that will explain an entire industry?” (June 2, 2025) — a crowd-sourced list Kyle recovered by hand; the full list lives on what is the single best book… (tweet). It was listed there as “Energy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil”.
Connections
- Vaclav Smil — author.
- Technological Innovation — energy as the constraint every other technology is measured against.
- Historical Futurism
- what is the single best book… (tweet) — recommendation #2: named in this crowd-sourced thread.