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Renowned scientists Christakis and Fowler present compelling evidence for our profound influence on one another's tastes, health, wealth, happiness, beliefs, even weight, as they explain how social networks form and how they operate.
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.

"Social networks are intricate things of beauty. They are so elaborate and so complex—and so ubiquitous, in fact—that one has to wonder what purpose they serve. Why are we embedded in them? How do they form? How do they work? How do they affect us?
…If we want to understand how society works, we need to fill in the missing links between individuals. We need to understand how interconnections and interactions between people give rise to wholly new aspects of human experience that are not present in the individuals themselves. If we do not understand social networks, we cannot hope to fully understand either ourselves or the world we inhabit."

Nicholas Christakis

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is an internist and social scientist who conducts research on social factors that affect health, health care, and longevity. He is Professor of Medical Sociology in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School; Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; and Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is the Master of Pforzheimer House in Harvard College.

 Dr. Christakis' lab is currently focused on the relationship between social networks and health. People are inter-connected, and so their health is inter-connected. This research engages two types of phenomena: the social, mathematical, and biological rules governing how social networks form ("connection") and the biological and social implications of how they operate to influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors ("contagion"). Other ongoing investigations in the lab consider the effects of neighborhoods on people's health, the biodemographic determinants of longevity, the widowhood effect ("dying of a broken heart"), and the genetic bases for human behaviors.

 Along with his long-time collaborator, James Fowler, Dr. Christakis has authored a general-audience book on social networks: Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, which has been translated into nearly twenty foreign languages.

Личен сайт: http://christakis.med.harvard.edu/index.html; http://connectedthebook.com/

James Fowler

James H. Fowler is a Professor in the School of Medicine and the Division of Social Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He was recently named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and one of Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers.

James's work lies at the intersection of the natural and social sciences. His primary areas of research are social networks, behavioral economics, evolutionary game theory, political participation, cooperation, and genoplitics (the study of the genetic basis of political behavior).

James has been interviewed by Stephen Colbert and was named "most original thinker" of the year by The McLaughlin Group. His research on genopolitics with Chris Dawes has been featured in New York Times Magazine's Year in Ideas, and his research on social networks with Nicholas Christakis has been featured in Time's Year in Medicine (twice), and in Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Business Ideas.

Science magazine dubbed Christakis and Fowler the "dynamic duo" (though James thinks Nicholas makes a better Adam West). Together they have written a book on social networks for a general audience called Connected. Winner of aBooks for a Better Life Award, it has been translated into twenty languages, named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review, and featured in Wired, Oprah's Reading Guide, Business Week's Best Books of the Year, GOOD's 15 Books You Must Read, and a cover story in New  York Times Magazine.

Личен сайт: http://connectedthebook.com/