There is a Silicon Valley-adjacent techno-optimist group that constantly urges for increasing investment into "innovations" that promise to change the way we live now. There is also a group that views all "innovations" with skepticism, the consequence of an aggressively capitalist society, and champions "de-growth". In this book, Vaclav Smil offers a useful balanced counterpoint to both the sanguine group and the naysayers, acknowledging the significant human flourishing enabled by innovations while highlighting common failure points where such innovations fell short of their initial promise.

Smil organizes the book into three sections for three different types of failure: innovations that were and ultimately fell out of favor due to externalities (leaded gasoline, DDT, CFCs); innovations that were and failed to meet their promise (airships, nuclear fission, supersonic flight); and innovations that never came to be (vacuum tube travel, nitrogen-fixing grains, nuclear fusion). The cases that he highlights for each failure mode help illustrate the nuances in why, even as science and invention mature, these sometimes fail to translate into society-changing innovations - beyond simple explanations of regulatory obstruction that proponents sometimes default to. His description of challenges in developing nuclear fission plants, in particular, stood out as succinct and readable, and highlighted his expertise in areas of energy and environment.

The book succeeds in providing a more realistic view of the complicated course of developing innovation from scientific discovery and invention than is popularly depicted in the media. One question the book provokes but doesn't fully explore is how a savvy consumer, investor, or innovator can learn from some of these common failure modes to champion better and safer technologies. While some innovations that failed due to externalities were predictable (e.g. leaded gasoline, where the health effects of lead were known at the time of its development), others involved "unknown unknowns" (e.g. CFCs, where iterative waves of invention seemed to bring on new environmental concerns - from the ozone hole to global warming) - how should society consider taking on the "right" amount of risk? And while the innovations that have yet to be appear to have near-insurmountable challenges at this time (e.g. technological challenges in nuclear fusion), many another successful innovation has hinged on a timely discovery that enables the entire apparatus to work - how should society consider further investment in promising technologies when the timing and existence of such hinge points is unpredictable and uncertain? I only hope Smil continues the exploration of these themes in his future work.

Thank you MIT Press for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.