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GPS, Q8: What was the last book that you read and liked ?

Kleinberg: In preparing for my class on networks this spring, I re-read Thomas Schelling's "Micromotives and Macrobehavior", one of our assigned readings for the course. It's a very nice exploration into the power of mathematical models in the social sciences, and the ways in which one can use them to identify common themes at work in many different settings. It's also a book that rewards re-reading, since you see fresh things in it when you know more about the technical context surrounding the examples.

I also recently finished reading Fernand Braudel's "On History"; it was recommended to me by a friend who's a historian as a glimpse into something of that field's view of time and temporal processes at a relatively abstract level. This is part of my long-term interest in trying to think about the role of time in complex data; since much of the challenge here lies in finding the right structures and definitions, many of which are quite subtle, it's useful to look as broadly as possible into what other disciplines have done when reasoning about the importance of temporal phenomena.

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