Vaclav Smil, the extraordinary polymath, critically evaluates what we know about the enormous impact of humans on the productive capacity of Earth through our history. He concludes that our future will bring major challenges to society and threats to our biotic storehouse if we are to meet the demands of the projected nine billion people to feed by 2050. -- Harold Mooney, Professor of Biology, Emeritus, Stanford University A great book that will be a revered source of information about how we use our biosphere for a long time to come. -- Marc Imhoff, former Terra Project Scientist, Goddard Space Flight Center, NAS Vaclav Smil is an experienced author who always brings a wide and balanced perspective to his work. This new book is no exception and provides an authoritative and critical analysis of Earth's biomass and deals with such important issues as extinction, domestication, biomass burning and deforestation, population growth, urbanization, industrialization, carbon budgets, and the future effects of climate change. It is more than just a synthesis of past research for it is enlivened by his own appraisal of the quality of what has been achieved and of our research needs for the future. -- Andrew Goudie, Emeritus Professor of Geography, University of Oxford

Vaclav Smil is the author of more than thirty books on energy, the environment, food, and the history of technical advances, including Harvesting the Biosphere: What We Have Taken from Nature, published by the MIT Press. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. In 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.