From the Internet to networks of friendship, disease transmission, and even terrorism, the concept--and the reality--of networks has come to pervade modern society. But what exactly is a network? What different types of networks are there? Why are they interesting, and what can they tell us? In recent years, scientists from a range of fields--including mathematics, physics, computer science, sociology, and biology--have been pursuing these questions and building a new "science of networks." This book brings together for the first time a set of seminal articles representing research from across these disciplines. It is an ideal sourcebook for the key research in this fast-growing field.

The book is organized into four sections, each preceded by an editors' introduction summarizing its contents and general theme. The first section sets the stage by discussing some of the historical antecedents of contemporary research in the area. From there the book moves to the empirical side of the science of networks before turning to the foundational modeling ideas that have been the focus of much subsequent activity. The book closes by taking the reader to the cutting edge of network science--the relationship between network structure and system dynamics. From network robustness to the spread of disease, this section offers a potpourri of topics on this rapidly expanding frontier of the new science.

Criticism of this book thus far stems from the following:

1) It is a collection of papers.
2) Some of those papers are fairly technical and may be a little daunting for beginners.

While both of these criticisms are accurate, they don't stop the book from being an excellent resource.

While it is a collection of papers, it is a very well-chosen one which includes some of the most important and influential papers in the field, and covers a wide array of subjects within it. Furthermore, each section has an intro written by the authors, which summarizes the works in the section in a fairly nontechnical manner.

This book saved me from days of basic research and frustration in trying to locate full-text articles, and when I was done with it I felt that I had a fairly good working knowledge of the field. I imagine it will be fairly handy for future reference as well.

As for (2), this book was my introduction to network analysis, and while I admit I was unable to read every paper, I was able to understand the main point of almost all of them. Caveat: I am a mathematician. However, as I said, I was previously unfamiliar to the field--and my background gave me little advantage considering I didn't care to go through the equations in detail.

I would recommend this book to anyone with a mildly technical background (say, a few years of university-level science, engineering, or math under their belt) interested in learning about network theory.

I am very disappointed with that book. The summary as published by Amazon convinces us that it is a general reader book. It is not. Complexity demands simplicity for understanding. This book is about complication (sorry) and frustrates the reader who wants a reference book - as it looks assured by its (now I know) ambitious title. It is not for beginners.

I was disappointed. The authors are leading scientists in the field, and I therefore expected a coherent exposition of the subject based on their combined knowledge and experience. Instead, the book is only a collection of reprints with some short paragraphs to use as linkage. It is not much more than a list of "best" papers in the field.

Excellent resource to follow the progress of Network Science through the history of the field up to the present day. I would definitlly recommend this book to anyone embarking on a social netowkring track. You may need a math referesher to follow some of the studies but well worth it!