Vaclav Smil (Personal website / Wikipedia) is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. He does interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, environmental and population change, food production, history of technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy.

How the World Really Works is necessary reading if you are clinging to the illusion that windmills, solar panels, and electric cars will allow us to finally transition away from fossil fuels. Our dependence on fossil fuels permeates all areas of our lives. Consider some of these memorable takeaways from my reading of this tour de force of a book:

• 50% of the food produced in the world is dependent on fertilizers derived from fossil fuels.
• The four pillars of modern civilization — ammonia (i.e fertilizer), plastics, steel, and concrete — all require tremendous amounts of energy to produce. There is no substitute to provide the energy necessary to produce these materials at our current scale.
• Diesel fuel is a critical input for almost everything we touch — from the mining machines that extract raw materials and the tractors that farm the fields, to the countless tractor-trailer semis that dot our highways delivering nearly everything we touch. There is no renewable alternative to diesel fuel.
• We are more dependent on plastics than we know. It might be easy enough to stop using plastic water bottles, but the next time you are in a hospital, look around and see how much of the medical world is made of plastic. Same goes for just about every other corner of our lives.

This book is written objectively. Smil does not come across as an environmentalist or an alarmist. He is merely a scientist, soberly telling us the way the world works.