book reviews
Energy Bask for Man and Nature
Howard T. Odum, University of Florida and Elisabeth Odum, Santa Fe Community College. Mecraw-Hill Rook Company, New York, 1976. x + 297 pp. Figs. 16 X 23.5 em. This book is written in the style of a monograph for the purposes of enlightening "the general public, political leaders, and students" to the nature of energy flow. Its prime concession to students is an appendix which contains a set of questions and activities for each of the chapters. The bmk consists of 16 chapters organized into three parts. The first part is eight chapters in length and is the section in whieh the foundations of our concepts of energy, energy ilnw, and systems analysis are laid. The application of systems diagrams and analysis is introduced through examples drawn from ecological systems that may be somewhat more familiar to the reader than the global energy systems to which this book is addressed. In the final chapter of this section systems diagrams are developed fnr energy cycles on a world-wide scale. In Dart twn the authors review human
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Journal of Chemical Education
13 is concluded the energy basis of human culture from a hunting and gathering postindustrial society dependent upon a rapidly depleting bank of fossil fuels has been reviewed and some of the implications of this for our individual life styles have been probed. In the final three chapters it is seen that all of the trends identified earlier logically culminate in the energy crisis and global economic distress of the first half of the present decade. We must now look forward to a society in whieh economic growth is no longer deemed a gwd. The authors foresee a time rapidly approaching of a steady state or even slowly declining energy consumption and associated with it a general decline in standard of living. In the concluding chapter they issue a plea far a wise and enlightened entrance to this new oeriod in human historv and the" m i n t out wavs " in whieh individual happiness and satisfaction can be achieved within the constraints they anticipate. The hook is a valuable application of the systems approach to the exceedingly complex problems of the society which hasdeveloped. It provides very useful ways of condensing these complexities to packages which can be grasped readily and whose interrelationships are not completely lost in thesimplification process. I fully expect to use many of the ideas introduced here to elucidate problems I have addressed in various courses and leetures. The book itself is simply and attractively done. The text is nearlv errar-free and is ~
