Invention and Innovation

A Brief History of Hype and Failure

Vaclav Smil

$49.99

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

MIT Press
04 April 2023

History of engineering & technology

From the New York Times-bestselling author, a new volume on the history of human ingenuity-and its attendant breakthroughs and busts.

From the New York Times-bestselling author, a new volume on the history of human ingenuity-and its attendant breakthroughs and busts.

Included in BILL GATES's 2023 Holiday Reading List Included in Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2023 Included in The Next Big Idea Club's February 2023 Must-Read Books  ""Every Smil book that I own is marked up with lots of notes that I take while reading. Invention and Innovation is no exception. Even when I disagree with him, I learn a lot from him...he always strengthens my thinking."" -Bill Gates, Gates Notes

The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most readable book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author-a favorite of Bill Gates-pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI. He reminds us that even after we go quite far along the invention-development-application trajectory, we may never get anything real to deploy. Or worse, even after we have succeeded by introducing an invention, its future may be marked by underperformance, disappointment, demise, or outright harm.

Drawing on his vast breadth of scientific and historical knowledge, Smil explains the difference between invention and innovation, and looks not only at inventions that failed to dominate as promised (such as the airship, nuclear fission, and supersonic flight), but also at those that turned disastrous (leaded gasoline, DDT, and chlorofluorocarbons). And finally, most importantly, he offers a ""wish list"" of inventions that we most urgently need to confront the staggering challenges of the twenty-first century.

Filled with engaging examples and pragmatic approaches, this book is a sobering account of the folly that so often attends human ingenuity-and how we can, and must, better align our expectations with reality.

By: Vaclav Smil
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 567g
ISBN: 9780262048057
ISBN 10: 0262048051
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 04 April 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of forty books, including New York Times bestseller How the World Really Works and Energy and Civilization, published by the MIT Press. In 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2013 Bill Gates wrote on his website that ""there is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.

Reviews for Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure

Included in Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2023 In what is essentially a history of invention (and therefore, in many ways, a history of civilization) Smil reminds us that human beings tend to fail a lot more than they succeed. And yet we are forever striving after better ways to do things, straining toward some perfectible society that no single generation will ever reach. Though Smil warns against our seemingly innate compulsion to overpromise, he also celebrates our capacity for collective innovation, and recognizes we're going to need a lot of good ideas to get us out of the 21st century. -Lit Hub 10/11/2022 Smil, the author of more than 40 books on scientific subjects and global matters, is always worth reading...An informative, entertaining package from a gifted, original thinker. -Kirkus Reviews Smil (How the World Really Works), a professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, takes a thought-provoking look at what the long trajectory of inventions suggests about what to expect in the future...This is a solid corrective to the notion that human inventiveness can tackle any challenge. -Publishers Weekly