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What consumes more energy: a car or a smartphone? Understanding our world through numbers. Vaclav Smil is a master of numbers. He calculates whether a car or a smartphone requires more energy or how many people it took to build the pyramids. This is not only entertaining and occasionally surprising, but it also dispels some misconceptions and false ideas about how our world truly works.

Vaclav Smil has the ability to break down practically everything into numbers and make it quantifiable. In his global bestseller "Numbers Don't Lie," he provides an accessible introduction to a wide range of topics: population growth and diseases, nutrition and agriculture, energy and the environment, technological innovations, as well as the machines and devices that enable our modern civilization. Thus, the book also serves as a summary of all the subjects that Vaclav Smil has researched since the 1970s and covered in over 40 books. His perspective looks both to the past and to the contentious issues of current politics. He reveals the uniqueness of our species, our inventiveness, and our thirst for knowledge. He also takes us on a kind of fact-finding mission that offers fascinating information and surprising insights. Because in the end, it is the numbers that reveal the true state of the world to us.

“Contains everything that makes Smil's writing so great. I recommend this book to anyone who loves to learn.” - Bill Gates

250,000 copies sold worldwide. Understanding our world through numbers. Surprising insights into the big questions of our time. For all readers of Hans Rosling's "Factfulness." “An impressive, fascinating, and above all realistic portrait of our world and where it is headed.” - Steven Pinker.