Featured Science Author

Featured Author: Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson, the bestselling author of seven books, including Everything Bad Is Good for You, is back with Future Perfect, a new book about the way human and technological networks can solve complex social problems. The founder of a variety of influential websites -- most recently, outside.in -- he also writes for Time, Wired, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Below are some of his favorite books on the exploding new science of networks.

Steven Johnson
Book Cover Image. Title: Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age, Author: Steven Johnson
Book Cover Image. Title: Everything Bad is Good for You, Author: Steven Johnson
Book Cover Image. Title: Where Good Ideas Come From, Author: Steven Johnson
Book Cover Image. Title: The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, Author: Steven Johnson
Book Cover Image. Title: Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life, Author: Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

Linked

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo Barbasi

Albert-László Barabási's Linked and Duncan Watts's Six Degrees, both published roughly ten years ago, remain the two best introductions to network theory. (Some readers will have encountered some of the concepts they explore in Malcolm Gladwell's mega-bestseller The Tipping Point.) Buy Now

Book Cover Image. Title: Six Degrees: The Secrets of a Connected Age, Author: Duncan J. Watts

Six Degrees

Duncan J. Watts

See descriptive copy above. Buy Now

Book Cover Image. Title: The Social Conquest of Earth, Author: Edward O. Wilson

The Social Conquest of Earth

Edward O. Wilson

Wilson's latest is a fascinating argument for the power of group selection in the evolutionary history of human beings and the social insects. But perhaps more than that, it's a revealing first-person study of a great scientist changing his mind about an important theory. Buy Now

Book Cover Image. Title: The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, Author: Bert Holldobler

The Superorganism

Bert Holldobler, Edward O. Wilson

A perfect companion to The Social Conquest of Earth, with spectacular images that document the extraordinary communities of the social insects. Buy Now

Book Cover Image. Title: Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Author: Howard Rheingold

Smart Mobs

Howard Rheingold

Rheingold's delightful tour through the new modes of connection is as much about the technology and sociology of networks as it is about the science. The book has only grown more essential since it was published, as social networking has exploded as a core form of global communication. Buy Now

Book Cover Image. Title: Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Author: Robert Wright

Nonzero

Robert Wright

Wright's account of the long evolutionary and cultural history of exchanges where all parties win (as opposed to zero-sum games where there has to be a winner and a loser) has reverberated in my mind for more than a decade. It's one of those books that takes you effortlessly from jellyfish to the first human civilizations to the Internet -- and charts the shared qualities that connect those different realms. Buy Now