Invention and Innovation

From the New York Timesbestselling author, a new volume on the history of human ingenuity&mdashand its attendant breakthroughs and busts.Included in BILL GATES's 2023 Holiday Reading List Included in Lit Hub&rsquos Most Anticipated Books of 2023 Included in The Next Big Idea Club&rsquos February 2023 MustRead 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."&mdashBill Gates, Gates NotesThe world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most readable book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author&mdasha favorite of Bill Gates&mdashpens an insightful and factfilled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a cleareyed 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 inventiondevelopmentapplication 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. He then looks at three different types of inventions.Inventions that failed to dominate as promised:ulliAirshipsliliNuclear fissionliliSupersonic flightliulInventions that turned disastrous:ulliLeaded gasoline liliDDTliliChlorofluorocarbonsliulInventions we have long been promised (and that would be highly beneficial):ulliTravel in vacuum (hyperloop)liliNitrogenfixing cerealsliliNuclear fusionliulFinally, he offers a &ldquowish list&rdquo of inventions that we most urgently need to confront the staggering challenges of the twentyfirst century.Filled with engaging examples and pragmatic approaches, this book is a sobering account of the folly that so often attends human ingenuity&mdashand how we can, and must, better align our expectations with reality.