SPEED

An unhurried survey of the role speed plays in human life, machines, and the natural world.

Retired Canadian Czech professor and prolific author (How the World Really Works, 2022) Smil can’t be accused of either a lack of ambition or an overly narrow approach to his subjects. When he takes on a subject like speed, he applies himself to a glut of topics, including tectonic plates, cellular rearrangement, the relative pace of oxen versus horses in pulling plows, the introduction of the lathe, the efficiency of weapons in killing large numbers of people, and the introduction of “disgusting speed-eating contests.” (This last topic, sadly, receives less attention than most of the others.) Much of his work is devoted to speed and its limits in the present day. “Speed in modern societies has been embraced in ways that are as prominent as they are questionable and even irrational,” he writes. Though speed may be the subject of the book, “slow, methodical reading will bring greater rewards than zooming through the book at page-turning speed,” he advises. “This relentlessly quantitative approach may not be popular, but it is imperative for a proper understanding of the world and its dominant speeds.” Some readers may find Smil’s dive into the numerical swamp, and its numerous attending charts and diagrams, electrifying, but many are likely to experience it as forbidding. More crucially, Smil often churns out facts and figures but does not draw any but the most rudimentary conclusions from them. A long chapter about the development of life on Earth, for example, finally makes the point that evolution unfolds at different rates. Smil does little to connect the topics of his various chapters, and leaves the reader baffled about the relationship between them.

Disappointingly diffuse study of a sweeping subject.