Summary of Vaclav Smil's Grand Transitions

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 The modern world is a result of several transitions that have changed the way we live our lives. The premodern world was marked by a high degree of inertia and pattern persistence, as different climates and beliefs produced many specific outcomes.#2 There were many differences between everyday diets in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, but they all had one thing in common: they were highly inertial. They produced low population growth, limited food supplies, low-power energy conversions, and barely changing economic performance.#3 The lives of people can be changed dramatically by the effects of grand transitions. For example, the lives of a woman born in a poor French village in the first decade of the 19th century and her son in the Paris of the 1870s could have been completely different.#4 China is a great example of how a grand transition can be covered by the lives of just two generations. A girl born to a poor peasant family in 1945 grew up in a society whose mores and material possessions were near carbon copies of life a century ago. By 1961, she became the only member of her extended family who survived the world's most devastating famine.