Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Nicholas A. Christakis Cover design by Jamie Keenan Cover art by Jason Winter / Shutterstock Author photograph courtesy of the author Cover © 2019 Hachette Book Group, Inc. Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact
[email protected] Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Little, Brown Spark Hachette Book Group 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104 littlebrownspark.com First ebook edition: March 2019 Little, Brown Spark is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown Spark name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not
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Contents
Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Preface
Our Common Humanity
Chapter 1
The Society Within Us
Chapter 2
Unintentional Communities
Chapter 3
Intentional Communities
Chapter 4
Artificial Communities
Chapter 5
First Comes Love
Chapter 6
Animal Attraction
Chapter 7
Animal Friends
Chapter 8
Friends and Networks
Chapter 9
One Way to Be Social
Chapter 10 Remote Control Chapter 11 Genes and Culture Chapter 12 Natural and Social Laws Photos
Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Nicholas A. Christakis Resounding Praise for Blueprint Illustration Credits Notes Newsletters
The world is better the closer you are to Erika
Preface: Our Common Humanity
When I was a boy spending the summer in Greece in July of 1974, the military dictators unexpectedly fell from power. A former prime minister, Konstantinos Karamanlis, returned from exile to Syntagma (Constitution) Square in central Athens. Enormous crowds gathered in all the avenues approaching the square, and my mother, Eleni, took me and my brother Dimitri out into the city that night. In the preceding hours, the junta had sent scores of trucks with armed men and megaphones into the streets. “People of Athens,” the soldiers blared, “this doesn’t concern you. Stay inside.” My mother ignored the warnings. We got as close as a block from Syntagma Square, near the royal palace and the national zoo. She boosted us onto a huge stone wall topped with a wrought-iron fence that kept the animals on the other side from escaping. Dimitri and I stood with our backs pressed against the metal rails in the narrow bit of ledge that was available to us, and my mother stood below us wedged in among everyone else. The crowd was packed body to sweaty body. When Karamanlis arrived in Athens in the middle of the night, the crowd pulsed with power. The masses began chanting slogans revealing their pent-up frustrations with years of dictatorial rule and foreign meddling: “Down with the torturers!” “Out with the Americans!” Perhaps oddly for a man who has spent his adult life studying social phenomena,