We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don’t know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check—because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts.

The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible 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.

Size explains the regularities—and peculiarities—of the key processes shaping life (from microbes to whales), the Earth (from asteroids to volcanic eruptions), technical advances (from architecture to transportation), and societies and economies (from cities to wages).

What makes the modern world work? The answer to this deceptively simple question lies in four "grand transitions" of civilization - in populations, agriculture, energy, and economics - that have transformed the way we live.

In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel-driven civilization and offers listeners a magisterial overview of humanity's energy eras.

Bill Gates shares what he's learned in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address the problems, and sets out a vision for how the world can build the tools it needs to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. Bill Gates explains why he cares so deeply about climate change and what makes him optimistic that the world can avoid the most dire effects of the climate crisis. Gates says, "We can work on a local, national, and global level to build the technologies, businesses, and industries to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."

Henry Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders—Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher—through the distinctive strategies of statecraft that he believes they embodied. To each of these studies, Kissinger brings historical perception, public experience and, because he knew each of the subjects and participated in many of the events he describes, personal knowledge.

Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "dark" continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe's yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies in the heart of West Africa.

The world is being shaken by the collision of energy, climate change, and the clashing power of nations in a time of global crisis. The "shale revolution" in oil and gas - made possible by fracking technology, but not without controversy - has transformed the American economy, ending the "era of shortage", but introducing a turbulent new era. Almost overnight, the United States has become the world's number one energy powerhouse - and, during the coronavirus crisis, brokered a tense truce between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

This reissue of Thomas Sowell’s classic study of decision making, which includes a preface by the author, updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, one of America’s most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making—a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency but our very freedom.