Many impressive writers who come from journalism are the opposite. Many writers who come out of academia specialize in delving deep into a topic they’ve studied for years, but they typically don’t bring together insights from across many different disciplines.
I read Smil because he’s uniquely good at going both deep and broad. I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie. As regular TGN readers know, I’m a fan of Vaclav Smil, a Czech-Canadian professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba.
