Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie by Vaclav Smil (Goodreads).

Thanks to my friend Sangam for suggesting this book!

Numbers Don’t Lie is a collection of essays about different things but instead of opinions, it backs each claim with proof from science, that is, numbers. Each chapter has nice graphs and pictures that can help one understand.

I was a bit disappointed to find that this book does not touch much controversial topics as I expected. My original hope for the book was that it would take some highly debated topic and give the answer to it through numbers. But well, that did not happen.

However, the topics presented still hold value. Most of it is about things that we either do not bother or take for granted. For example, the book talked about how with the current pace of technology, we can never leave fossil fuels. It had nice eye-openers on EV cars with respect to batteries etc.

I learnt a lot of things from this book. Some concepts were quite confusing to understand because of technical gap, but most of the articles were comprehensible.

The book is not much long either, each chapter is like two or three pages, you can read it slowly and still complete it quick.