A good introductory book about networks and its role in our life. Some parts are a litte bit dry but in general an enjoyable work. ( )

A fascinating book about the intersection of graph theory and real life. ( )

An interesting book on network theory. The author nicely takes you through the evolutions of thought around the ways networks are organized, building up to the current theory of complex networks that relatively accurately models things like the internet. Complex networks are arranged with links between nodes. If we're thinking about the internet, then each node is a website and the links are the, well, links between them. Different nodes have different levels of fitness (mathematically defined as the likelyhood that it will be linked to, but practically just how good is the website), resulting in certain nodes (ex. Google, Amazon, Wikipedia) becoming hubs in the network, doing much of the work of interconnectivity for the entire thing.

The book lays out this theoretical framework very well, and it does seem accurate. The most interesting thing about the book to me, though, was its discussion of some of the implications of this. The existence of hubs means that the connectivity of a network is inordinately maintained by certain nodes and that means that those nodes are critical if you want to either protect or destroy the network. This means, for example, that some banks could be "too big to fail," because if their connectivity were lost the entire system would go out. Even more problematic, I thought, was Barbasi's discussion of the AIDS virus - HIV spreads through a network of sexual connectivity that follows this network pattern. To stop the spread of the disease you would want to interrupt this network. If there is limited treatment available (as there is in many parts of Africa, for example) network theory requires that the most promiscuous nodes have priority for treatment. Logical, but ethically weird to me.

Anyway, overall this was a very good book. It explained its topic well and gave me plenty to think about. Four stars. ( )

A good introduction to network science. Barabási explains the sequence of insights that led to recent insights into the properties of scale-free networks, which show up everywhere from the Internet to cellular biology. This is just an overview; the copious notes in back provide starting points if you want to delve further into the field. ( )

Superficial overview. ( )