When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development at the dawn of the 21st century--the attacks of 9/11, or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, and giving them...

"Today interest in social networks is growing by leaps and bounds, both in scientific discourse and popular culture. Networks are thought to be everywhere - from the architecture of our brains to global trade patterns. Networks are equally ubiquitous in the social world: they provide us with social support, account for the emergence of new trends and markets, and foster social protest, among other functions. Besides, who among us is not familiar with...

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world.The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch--the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes...

"This path-breaking study is about how ordinary people are gaining the means to be extraordinarily lethal. States are also concentrating their technological power, but their gains lag behind a shift in relative capacity that is already disrupting the role of conventional armed forces. The dispersal of emerging technologies such as roboics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, autonomous systems, and various forms of artificial intelligence is widening popular...

Relates the story of the trade that developed between China and Europe, the sharing of science and inventions between the two areas, and the two great paths, the Silk and Spice Routes, that connected them.