People : the inhabitants of our world -- What happens when we have fewer children? -- The best indicator of quality of life? Try infant mortality -- The best return on investment : vaccination -- Why it's difficult to predict how bad a pandemic will be while it is happening -- Growing taller -- Is life expectancy finally topping out? -- How sweating improved hunting -- How many people did it take to build the Great Pyramid? -- Why unemployment figures do not tell the whole story -- What makes people happy? -- The rise of megacities -- Countries : nations in the age of globalization -- The First World War's extended tragedies -- Is the US really exceptional? -- Why Europe should be more pleased with itself -- Brexit : realities that matter most will not change -- Concerns about Japan's future -- How far can China go? -- India vs. China -- Why manufacturing remains important -- Russia and the USA : how things never change -- Receding empires : nothing new under the sun -- Machines, designs, devices : inventions that made our modern world -- How the 1880s created our modern world -- How electric motors power modern civilization -- Transformers - the unsung silent, passive devices -- Why you shouldn't write diesel off just yet -- Capturing motion - from horses to electrons -- From the phonograph to streaming -- Inventing integrated circuits -- Moore's Curse : why technical progress takes longer than you think -- The rise of data : too much too fast -- Being realistic about innovation -- Fuels and electricity : energizing our societies -- Why gas turbines are the best choice -- Nuclear electricity - an unfulfilled promise -- Why you need fossil fuels to get electricity from wind -- How big can a wind turbine be? -- The slow rise of photovoltaics -- Why sunlight is still best -- Why we need bigger batteries -- Why electric container ships are a hard sail -- The real cost of electricity -- The inevitably slow pace of energy transitions -- Transport : how we get around -- Shrinking the journey across the Atlantic -- Engines are older than bicycles! -- The surprising story of inflatable tires -- When did the age of the car begin? -- Modern cars have a terrible weight-to-payload ratio -- Why electric cars aren't as great as we think (yet) -- When did the jet age begin? -- Why kerosene is king -- How safe is flying? -- Which is more energy efficient - planes, trains, or automobiles? -- Food : energizing ourselves -- The world without synthetic ammonia -- Multiplying wheat yields -- The inexcusable magnitude of global food waste -- The slow addio to the Mediterranean diet -- Bluefin tuna : on the way to etinction -- Why chicken rules -- (Not) drinking wine -- Rational meat-eating -- The Japanese diet -- Dairy products - the counter-trends -- Environment : damaging and protecting our world -- Animals vs. artifacts - which are more diverse? -- Planet of the cows -- The deaths of elephants -- Why calls for the Anthropocene era may be premature -- Concrete facts -- What's worse for the environment - your car or your phone? -- Who has better insulation? -- Triple-glazed windows : a see-through energy solution -- Improving the efficiency of household heating -- Running into carbon

"Vaclav Smil's mission is to make facts matter. An environmental scientist, policy analyst, and a hugely prolific author, he is Bill Gates' go-to guy for making sense of our world. In Numbers Don't Lie, Smil answers questions such as: What's worse for the environment--your car or your phone? How much do the world's cows weigh (and what does it matter)? And what makes people happy?"--