Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means

by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, the nation's foremost expert in the new science of networks,

Linked: Networks from Biology to the World Wide Web
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, professor, physics, Notre Dame @ WGBH Forum Network

Best comment @ Amazon:
Cotton Candy--Lots of Air, Some Sugar, No Bibliography, June 3, 2002
By Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
"I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it is coherent, thoughtful, and tells a story about the emerging science of networks that anyone, who can read, can understand. This is a non-trivial accomplishment, so 4 stars.
However, the book is also--being brilliantly designed to be understood by the lowest common denominator, an undergraduate--somewhat shallow and empty.... especially when compared with Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science", 1197 pages not counting the index, which is at the other extreme.
Although there are good notes, there is no bibliography, and the author fails to use network methodology to illustrate and document the emerging literature on networks--called citation analysis, this would have been a superb appendix to the book that would have taken it up a notch in utility."

From Publishers Weekly
"Information, disease, knowledge and just about everything else is disseminated through a complex series of networks made up of interconnected hubs, argues University of Notre Dame physics professor Barabasi. These networks are replicated in every facet of human life: "There is a path between any two neurons in our brain, between any two companies in the world, between any two chemicals in our body. Nothing is excluded from this highly interconnected web of life." In accessible prose, Barabasi guides readers through the mathematical foundation of these networks. He shows how they operate on the Power Law, the notion that "a few large events carry most of the action." The Web, for example, is "dominated by a few very highly connected nodes, or hubs... such as Yahoo! or Amazon.com." Barabasi notes that "the fittest node will inevitably grow to become the biggest hub."

see also:

Business : Your Network - What type is it?
by Ellis Pratt (Technical Authors) on 16-Jul-05 10:39pm