Vaclav Smil is Everywhere

Well, almost everywhere. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a review of the Czech-born, Canadian-residing polymath's latest book, Prime Movers of Globalization, a history of diesel and turbine engines and their importance to the trend of globalization. Here's a sample from the review, written by Nick Schulz of the American Enterprise Institute:

Mr. Smil's account of the engineering advances throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries— advances that brought the world large marine diesels and gas turbines—is first-rate history, both thorough and compelling. It is also fairly technical for the lay reader. But the rich detail doesn't just explain the intricacies of the engines and how they work. It also helps to show how easily we take for granted machine-power of such marvelous sophistication and, relatedly, why an environmental dreamer might mistakenly imagine its disappearance within a quarter-century.

Also, we can't resist noting that Foreign Policy magazine recently included Smil on its second annual list of the world's 100 most important global thinkers. Number 49, to be exact, citing him for his "career of interdisciplinary contrarianism, writing hundreds of scientific articles and dozens of books attacking sacred cows of Western environmental and geopolitical thought."

The review is here, the FP list here. More to come, no doubt.