Energy and Civilization: A History
| Author | Vaclav Smil |
|---|---|
| Published | 2017 |
| Format | Book |
TL;DR — Vaclav Smil’s history of humanity told through energy: from human and animal muscle and biomass to coal, oil and electricity, and what each transition did to societies.
Published by the MIT Press in 2017, a substantially rewritten successor to Smil’s 1994 Energy in World History. Smil follows the energy sources and converters societies have depended on: the energetics of foraging and early farming, traditional agriculture, draft animals, water and wind power, and then the fossil-fuel era of coal, oil, gas and electricity.
The book’s method is quantitative throughout — power densities, conversion efficiencies, per-capita energy use — and it argues that energy flows set the limits and possibilities of every civilization without determining its course. It ends with the consequences and limits of the modern high-energy world.
What it is: a major book by a widely cited energy historian, in print. This copy was downloaded through JSTOR and carries its watermark.
Where this came from
- A copy saved in October 2026.
564 pages. A PDF copy is held in Kyle’s private archive; it is not linked or shared here.