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.
