| View Larger Image | Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives | Hardcoverby Nicholas A. Christakis (Author), James H. Fowler (Author)
| List Price: | $25.99 | | Price: | $17.15 | | You Save: | $8.84 (34%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | Little, Brown and Company | | Page Count: | 352 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 28, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 2,165nd |
|
FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780316036146
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Drs. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. In CONNECTED, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, CONNECTED overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 14 reviews)
|
A wonderful and smart look at social networks by Bojan Tunguz (Greencastle, IN USA)  5 Stars
November 11, 2009
The raise of the internet has precipitated the increase of public's interest in networks and many books have come out in recent years that explore this new fascination. Most of these books, however, focus on some very trite and visible aspect of the web networks, and don't delve deeper into the more subtle and nonobvious properties of networks. In the light of that the strength of "Connected" is that it heavily relies on well established scientific research and presents it in an accessible fashion that still does full justice to the topic. Both authors are themselves prominent researchers in the field, and this fact helps with the choice and presentation of topics. The particular focus on social networks is very timely in the light of recent explosion of online social networks. However, social networks have been around for a very long time. In fact, there have been some evolutionary theories that suggest that our rise as a species has been to a large extent spurred by the need to manage large social networks.
The book provides many interesting and nontrivial insights into what sorts of social networks are most beneficial in certain circumstances, and which ones on the other hand can have the most deleterious effects, such as in cases of spreading of diseases. One of the more pleasant aspects of this book has been the more positive attitude towards the role of religion in society that is not simplistic and provides us with some useful new insights and ways of looking at religion. For instance, from the purely social-networking point of view God can be viewed as a node in a network that is equally distant from all other nodes - individual believers in this case. This provides us with a useful new paradigm, and it would be interesting to see if other social researchers would employ it in their investigations and analyses of religion in the upcoming years.
If you are looking for a well-researched and accessible book on social networks, this is probably the best one that has been on the market thus far.
| |
Confirmation of what you might suspect by Mark K. Murphy (Portland, OR USA)  4 Stars
November 08, 2009
Reading about Mass Psychogenic Illness I started wondering about whether it might explain the fervor of Tea Party folks demonstrating against improving a health care funding system that is a national embarrassment. I don't think the book will answer that but you'll find it cites studies to explain things you've likely noticed such as how people will start feeling symptoms similar to those reported by others around them.
There is a study of teen sexual practices in one town that will straighten the hair of any parent of teenagers. Political fans will enjoy the description of how Obama used the web to win in 2008. If you are perpetually battling your weight, you may think about hanging out more with skinny people.
If you are interested in Web 2.0 and social networking as I am, this is an essential read but it may leave you wanting more. The power and potential of the internet gets a look but mostly in the final chapter. One hopes the authors will write a follow-up that builds on this book and focusing more on the effects of being able to project our influence over the net. What techniques on Facebook, LinkedIn tend to yield results? What might be the long-term effects of social networks on national and ethnic cultures? What implications does hyper-connectedness hold for democracy, mental health and economic prosperity?
| |
Junk Science, Naive "Reasoning" and Bigotry by kbrigan (Sacramento, CA)  1 Stars
November 01, 2009
Whatever happened to formal logic study? Correlation is not causation, no matter how much bigotry backs it up. This guy claims "overeating" is tribal, yet FAT PEOPLE DO NOT EAT DIFFERENTLY THAN THINNER PEOPLE. Fat people tend to group together for the same reasons Blacks and the Disabled group together -- BIGOTRY. This book is like a bad message board -- the discussion is only there in reaction to unchallenged assumptions and preconceptions. No science in sight. Give this one a miss.
| |
Bridget's Review by bridget3420 5 Stars
October 31, 2009
People that you don't even know can make an impact on your life. Sometimes it's a good thing but it can also be toxic. If you are interested in finding out how the slightest thing that someone else does can change you, I suggest you read this book.
| |
Great Book! by Jessica Grady-nugent (Hull, MA) 5 Stars
October 27, 2009
A quick read that really makes you think about the history and future of human society.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Social Structures
by John Levi Martin (Author)
Social Structures is a book that examines how structural forms spontaneously arise from social relationships. Offering major insights into the building blocks of social life, it identifies which locally emergent structures have the capacity to grow into larger ones and shows how structural tendencies associated with smaller structures shape and constrain patterns of larger structures. The book then investigates the role such structures have played in the emergence of the modern...
| 
| What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
by Malcolm Gladwell (Author)
What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?
In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point; Blink; and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first...
| 
| Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life
by Mario Luis Small (Author)
Social capital theorists have shown that some people do better than others in part because they enjoy larger, more supportive, or otherwise more useful networks. But why do some people have better networks than others? Unanticipated Gains argues that the practice and structure of the churches, colleges, firms, gyms, childcare centers, and schools in which people happen to participate routinely matter more than their deliberate "networking."
Exploring the experiences of New York City...
| 
| The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
by W. Brian Arthur (Author)
"More than any thing else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being," says W. Brian Arthur. Yet, until now the major questions of technology have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from -- how exactly does invention work? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Why are certain regions -- Cambridge, England, in the 1920s and Silicon Valley today -- hotbeds of innovation, while others languish? Does technology, like...
| 
| Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility
by Ellen J. Langer (Author)
If we could turn back the clock psychologically, could we also turn it back physically? For more than thirty years, award-winning social psychologist Ellen Langer has studied this provocative question, and now, in Counterclockwise, she presents the answer: Opening our minds to what’s possible, instead of presuming impossibility, can lead to better health–at any age.
Drawing on landmark work in the field and her own body of colorful and highly original experiments–including the...
|
|
|
