• April 11, 2025

Fifty Years, Fifty Books

Fifty years ago, in May 1975, I finished the first draft of my first book, and China’s Energy was published in 1976. In April 2025 Creating and Transforming the 20^th Century became my 50^th published book (including new revised, updated and expanded editions). The following publishers brought out the original English editions: The MIT Press (17  books), Oxford University Press (6), Viking, One World and Wiley (4 each), Praeger and M.E. Sharpe (3 each), Plenum, Routledge and Westview  (2 each) and the American Enterprise Institute, Elsevier and the Scientific American Library had each published one of my books.

Twenty five of these 50 books have been translated into the total of 30 languages including Albanian, Arabic, Chinese (complex), Chinese (simplified), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Translations leaders are How the World Really Works (26 languages), Numbers Don’t Lie (25 languages), Size (13 languages), Energy and Civilization (8 languages), How to Feed the World (6 languages) and Growth (5 languages).

All my books are interdisciplinary, countering the modern trend toward increased specialization, and their content and analyses have been inevitably limited by my capability to master many specific components. Energy, an inherently multidisciplinary subject, has been the topic of more than 20 books. They range from systematic examinations of energy in nature and society and energy in civilization’s history to more specific inquiries about energy transitions, biomass energies, energy cost of food production, natural gas, oil, power density, diesel engines and gas turbines.

Eight books deal with food production, its energy and material requirements, its impacts on the environment, and with diets, health and dietary transitions. Eight books focus on the history of technical inventions and advances; six on the Earth’s biosphere, its productivity and its biogeochemical cycles; five on China’s energy, environment and population; three books deal with fundamental topics of growth (in all its forms), size and grand historical transitions. Finally, there are also books on ancient Rome, history of iron and steel making, material requirements of modern civilization and the two of my bestsellers, Numbers Don’t Lie and How the Modern World Really Works.

Source: From the Author’s website