Energy: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides) Kindle Edition

This is a very interesting book, but most of all a comprehensive review of renewables. Interesting all of the hard fact information that it contains. Highly recommended, fascinating.

This is not truly a Beginner's Guide. The book is more like an Executive Summary of the many writings by the prolific author, up to 2005. No references are given. There is no appendix with useful tables of values. However, there are many useful tables, lists and values dispersed throughout the book. The book has a few flubs: confusing ultra-violet radiation with infrared, missing a "per year" in a sentence, and draft animals pulling with kg of force.Some more serious problems occur on page 152, where the parenthetical definition of "net energy ratio" is actually the the definition of EROI, energy return on investment (of energy). The numbers discussed in the remainder of the paragraph are actually values of 1- 1/EROI . A true beginner would be flummoxed.Another grievance is that the difference between installed capacity of wind power and the actual production of electrical power is not emphasized forcefully enough. A wind production number is given on page 169 (as a percent of world electrical power), but you are on your own to figure out the important capacity factor, and then to put wind power in a fair comparison with nuclear power and coal power. The summary of wind energy is otherwise excellent, as is the summary of photosynthesis and biofuels. All ethanol fans should read it.The focus of the book in not renewable energy policy. The scope is much more grand, all done wonderfully in consistent S.I. Units, with respect for the intelligence of the reader. The author gets to the point. Energetics is the most concise way to organize knowledge of your universe. The brilliant author summarizes nearly all of it in 176 pages: your cells, your home economics, your technology, your planet. For larger scale solar and galactic - you may need to shop elsewhere. Presentation of energetics leads to implications in the sociology of jet travel, urban planning, and history of science and technology. For example, on page 93 we learn how the celebrated inventor James Watt delayed progressive development of the steam engine.The book would be a great investment of time and money if a better book was not available: "Energy in Nature and Society", published by Smil in 2008. That book has more figures, of better quality, appendices and approximately 3 times the amount of text. The overlap in not complete, though. You won't find that tidbit about Watt in the 2008 work, or the fact that swarms of insects soiling the leading edge of wind turbine blades can cause a nearly instant drop in power production by up to 20%.

Very informative book. However I'm left wondering the actual energy cost to build and maintain and strategies to dispose of all these alternative resources.I am always looking for more information on that. I felt the book touches it but does not supply a satisfactory answer. That makes me more curious to find out more. I have read many of his books and they are all substantial and well substantiated, and complementary in many aspects. I trust Vaclav immensely and hope he can delve more into those aspects on one of his new books.

I picked up Vaclav Smil's Energy because I wanted to better understand mankind's current use of energy, and to develop a better perspective on how I personally consume energy. The book was perfect for both of these purposes.At ~200 pages, I figured the book would provide a quick survey of many topics at a high level, and wouldn't read like a science textbook. This is true, but someone looking for an overview should know that this book is packed with detailed explanations of the topics that are covered. As a non-scientist, this book increased my knowledge and certainly shed light on the applications to modern life that I was looking for.I highly recommend this book.

This book is informative and offers a decent introduction for beginners. But at points it gets tedious with too much detail. Overall the book reads like a collection of facts and lacks a coherent story.The writing can also be improved. For example, the book starts with the Greek root of the word energy -- a definition opening is weak and boring. Why is this opening chosen? Does knowing the Greek root help us understand the concept of energy better? I'm not sure.

Different kinds of energy, past and present. Dry, factual, easy to read, but hard to absorb, because so much information is transmitted. I learned a great deal. PS: there will be numbers!

The writing was straight forward and the historical overview of energy sources was interesting. The evaluation of future energy sources is limited to current knowledge as it only can be. However what was not addressed was the impact on demand for natural resources required by developing technologies. Such as, the quantities of steel, concrete, copper, rare earths, lithium and others. I believe limits on key natural resources will be the limiting factor on any of the developing energy technologies.

This is my first book by Vaclav Smil. I had heard great things about him, and I was not disappointed. The book is a very detailed short introduction to the topic of energy. My only complaint is that the book is a little dry. Apart from that it is very much worth your time.

This book takes you everywhere: what energy is conceptually, how we have quantified it, where we get it, and the past and future of energy. I recommend it.

Livro muito bom para a proposta de ser um guia para iniciantes no tema. O tema energia é abordado em perspectiva temporal (passado, presente e tendências para o futuro) em setores e atividades mais importantes. Em geral, a leitura é agradável. Apesar do conteúdo ser conciso, os capítulos trazem dados e gráficos interessantes que podem ser consultados posteriormente, mas para isso o índice remissivo poderia ser mais extenso.

Excellent

Vaclav Smil (the author) having already written so many books on subjects related to energy (ex. E. and civilization, or Prime movers, or Making the modern world), one may fear this book is only one more book by the same author on the same subject. However, I feel this book serves a useful purpose because it covers a larger variety of concerns about energy in a smaller volume than previous Smil's books (it almost fits in one's pocket). Covered concerns are the very concept of energy, the climate, its harnessing in history, its role in our modern world, and questions for our future. As usual with this author the book is abundantly documented, and it is laden with numbers, but as the author writes in another book "he will never apologize for that". Altogether, I recommend this book, at least for readers who have not already read Smil on that same subject.