New year, blank slate—the perfect opportunity to bone up on your history. If you’re looking for history books that will show you the hidden facets, events, and figures who have shaped our world, look no further than the best history books coming in January.
The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
592The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook
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Overview
A brilliant recasting of the turning points in world history, including the one we're living through, as a collision between old power hierarchies and new social networks.
“Captivating and compelling.” —The New York Times
"Niall Ferguson has again written a brilliant book...In 400 pages you will have restocked your mind. Do it." —The Wall Street Journal
“The Square and the Tower, in addition to being provocative history, may prove to be a bellwether work of the Internet Age.” —Christian Science Monitor
Most history is hierarchical: it's about emperors, presidents, prime ministers and field marshals. It's about states, armies and corporations. It's about orders from on high. Even history "from below" is often about trade unions and workers' parties. But what if that's simply because hierarchical institutions create the archives that historians rely on? What if we are missing the informal, less well documented social networks that are the true sources of power and drivers of change?
The 21st century has been hailed as the Age of Networks. However, in The Square and the Tower, Niall Ferguson argues that networks have always been with us, from the structure of the brain to the food chain, from the family tree to freemasonry. Throughout history, hierarchies housed in high towers have claimed to rule, but often real power has resided in the networks in the town square below. For it is networks that tend to innovate. And it is through networks that revolutionary ideas can contagiously spread. Just because conspiracy theorists like to fantasize about such networks doesn't mean they are not real.
From the cults of ancient Rome to the dynasties of the Renaissance, from the founding fathers to Facebook, The Square and the Tower tells the story of the rise, fall and rise of networks, and shows how network theoryconcepts such as clustering, degrees of separation, weak ties, contagions and phase transitionscan transform our understanding of both the past and the present.
Just as The Ascent of Money put Wall Street into historical perspective, so The Square and the Tower does the same for Silicon Valley. And it offers a bold prediction about which hierarchies will withstand this latest wave of network disruptionand which will be toppled.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780735222915 |
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Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 01/16/2018 |
Pages: | 592 |
Product dimensions: | 6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations xi
List of Plates xvii
Preface: The Networked Historian xix
Part I Introduction: Networks and Hierarchies
1 The Mystery of the Illuminati 3
2 Our Networked Age 10
3 Networks, Networks Everywhere 15
4 Why Hierarchies? 21
5 From Seven Bridges to Six Degrees 24
6 Weak Ties and Viral Ideas 30
7 Varieties of Network 36
8 When Networks Meet 42
9 Seven Insights 46
10 The Illuminati Illuminated 49
Part II Emperors and Explorers
11 A Brief History of Hierarchy 59
12 The First Networked Age 65
13 The Art of the Renaissance Deal 68
14 Discoverers 71
15 Pizarro and the Inca 77
16 When Gutenberg Met Luther 82
Part III Letters and Lodges
17 The Economic Consequences of the Reformation 93
18 Trading Ideas 95
19 Networks of Enlightenment 101
20 Networks of Revolution 106
Part IV The Restoration of Hierarchy
21 The Red and the Black 121
22 From Crowd to Tyranny 124
23 Order Restored 129
24 The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha 134
25 The House of Rothschild 138
26 Industrial Networks 145
27 From Pentarchy to Hegemony 151
Part V Knights of the Round Table
28 An Imperial Life 155
29 Empire 158
30 Taiping 168
31 The Chinese Must Go' 173
32 The Union of South Africa 179
33 Apostles 186
34 Armageddon 193
Part VI Plagues and Pipers
35 Greenmantle 201
36 The Plague 213
37 The Leader Principle 222
38 The Fall of the Golden International 226
39 The Ring of Five 236
40 Brief Encounter 246
41 Ella in Reform School 254
Part VII Own the Jungle
42 The Long Peace 267
43 The General 270
44 The Crisis of Complexity 277
45 Henry Kissinger's Network of Power 284
46 Into the Valley 299
47 The Fall of the Soviet Empire 306
48 The Triumph of Davos Man 311
49 Breaking the Bank of England 316
Part VIII The Library of Babel
50 9/11/2001 333
51 9/15/2008 341
52 The Administrative State 347
53 Web 2.0 351
54 Coming Apart 360
55 Tweeting the Revolution 365
56 11/9/2016 380
Part IX Conclusion: Facing Cyberia
57 Metropolis 393
58 Network Outage 396
59 FANG, BAT and EU 412
60 The Square and the Tower Redux 419
Afterword: The Original Square and Tower 425
Appendix 433
References 439
Bibliography 493
Index 537