He may be one of Bill Gates’ favourite authors, but Czech-Canadian policy analyst and scientist Vaclav Smil is not everyone’s cup of tea. Admirers praise his data-driven arguments and encyclopaedic command of facts; detractors find him dense and bristle at his scepticism toward fashionable green narratives. Whichever camp you fall into—and we’ve found ourselves switching sides over time—ignoring Smil is risky. Few thinkers bring this much evidence to the table.

Classic Smil: steady change over spectacular leaps

Smil has long favoured gradual, accumulative progress rather than revolutionary leaps, a stance that rarely endears him to radicals. In Speed, he examines how velocity—in motion, communication, technology, and even social change—has shaped human development across millennia. The a

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