I wanted to read another book on my Kindle (I got it on Prime Day and I love it) and Mark Zuckerberg told me to read this. Okay I will! The book (author Smil) opens with a bunch of definitions from notable old people for the word energy and goes straightaway into a very broad and kind of random history lesson of sorts of past discoveries pertaining to anything energy related. The chapter ends with some lively energy units discussion.
Then right after Smil dives into a bunch more energy topics, this time about sun rays and electromagnetic radiation knowledge and earth science and volcanoes and plant facts. Smil spouts some old civilization stuff knowledge about horses and cows and why you should choose one over the other back in the day (cows are better 'cause they eat and digest stringy veggies and he randomly just started calling them ruminants out of the blue like I know what those are... well they're basically cows... just mammals that have digestive powers).
And then it's coal talk. And turbine schematics. And big wars. And a crazy amount of other things like eating and trains and economics. And then the book is over.
There is very little talk about the future of energy, which I thought would have been the most important topic to cover.The book covered a bit about energy sharing with a little conclusion for the tomorrow.
Anyway it's a very fast read (kinda felt like reading Sparknotes for textbooks). A number of topics in the book happened to be review since I took STEM classes at school. I doubt this book would be an easy read if you hadn't. There's just too much information going all at once and at times the writer sounds a little snooty.
But overall it's ok. I wouldn't recommend it to a friend. This book is pretty much a textbook. But if you are a trivia buff, this Beginner's Guide works great. However if you're more interested about what's happening now in terms of energy and the history and general science of it isn't super important, then energy is no good. I ended up a little disappointed. The book, being a Mark Zuckerberg recommendation, I thought would leave more of an impact or something after reading.
IMAGE SOURCE: book cover
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