Size Audiobook By Vaclav Smil cover art

Size

How It Explains the World

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Size

By: Vaclav Smil
Narrated by: Stephen Perring
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.62

Buy for $15.62

Brought to you by Penguin.

100 words: The New York Times bestselling author returns with a mind-opening exploration of how size defines life on Earth.

Explaining the key processes shaping size in nature, society and technology, Smil busts myths around proportions - from bodies to paintings and the so-called golden ratio - tells us what Jonathan Swift got wrong in Gulliver's Travels - the giant Brobdingnagian's legs would buckle under their enormous weight - and dives headfirst into the most contentious issue in ergonomics: the size of aeroplane seats.

It is no exaggeration to say this fascinating and wide-ranging tour de force will change the way you look at absolutely everything.

10 words: Size, an omnipresent scalar, is the measure of all things.

1 word: Size.

©2023 Vaclav Smil (P)2023 Penguin Audio Physics Science Mathematics History & Philosophy Technology History
All stars
Most relevant
It starts off well but quickly becomes tedious. It's mostly a recitation of spreadsheet data, such as "... changed from 1.17 to 1.2 which is markedly within the expected interval of 0.9 to 1.4." the other grievance I had was that it lingered on the Gulliver's travels for a way too long. The author himself points out that the story of Gulliver is a political satire and social criticism, not a scientific study of scaling and sizes. Yet, after the initial proof of how wrong the idea of lilliput or giant people is, he keeps comparing and pointing out the shortcomings of imaginary animals or people for a whole chapter.
Generally, it's a lot of data and might be good for research purposes. There's very little attempt made to relate this beyond the raw data. I felt like I was listening to a lecture and the professor just recited example and data so I could make my own conclusions later. It's a mind numbing barrage of numbers.
I had completely different and much more enjoyable experience with Naked Statistic by C. Wheelan.
So if you're looking for data and examples, this is your book. If you want more story and real world relatability, this is not your book. This is my second book by Smil (How the world really works) and it's going to be my last. I made a mistake thinking the second time might be better, but no. It's been the same style each time, and each time I couldn't finish the book.

Lot of data, no story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.