Bursts
The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do
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Narrated by:
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Richard McGonagle
About this listen
A revolutionary new theory showing how we can predict human behavior-from a radical genius and best-selling author.
Can we scientifically predict our future? Scientists and pseudo scientists have been pursuing this mystery for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. But now, astonishing new research is revealing patterns in human behavior previously thought to be purely random. Precise, orderly, predictable patterns.
Albert Laszlo Barabasi, already the world's preeminent researcher on the science of networks, describes his work on this profound mystery in Bursts, a stunningly original investigation into human nature. His approach relies on the digital reality of our world, from mobile phones to the Internet and email, because it has turned society into a huge research laboratory. All those electronic trails of time stamped texts, voicemails, and internet searches add up to a previously unavailable massive data set of statistics that track our movements, our decisions, our lives. Analysis of these trails is offering deep insights into the rhythm of how we do everything. His finding? We work and fight and play in short flourishes of activity followed by next to nothing. The pattern isn't random, it's "bursty." Randomness does not rule our lives in the way scientists have assumed up until now.
Illustrating this revolutionary science, Barabasi artfully weaves together the story of a 16th century burst of human activity-a bloody medieval crusade launched in his homeland, Transylvania, with the modern tale of a contemporary artist hunted by the FBI through our post 9/11 surveillance society. These narratives illustrate how predicting human behavior has long been the obsession, sometimes the duty, of those in power.
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Critic reviews
"In Linked, Barabasi showed us how complex networks unfold in space. In Bursts, he shows us how they unfold in time. Your life may look random to you, but everything from your visits to a web page to your visits to the doctor are predictable, and happen in bursts." (Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody)
"Barabasi is one of the few people in the world who understand the deep structure of empirical reality." (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan)
"Barabasi brings a physicist's penetrating eye to a sweeping range of human activities, from migration to web browsing, from wars to billionaires, from illnesses to letter writing, from the Department of Homeland Security to the Conclave of Cardinals. Barabasi shows how a pattern of bursts appears in what has long seemed a random mess. These bursts are both mathematically predictable and beautiful. What a joy it is to read him. You feel like you have emerged to see a new vista that, while it had always been there, you had just never seen." (Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, coauthor of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives)
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Story
In 1912, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the US government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the Adam and Eve of the NSA, Elizebeth's story, incredibly, has never been told.
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Captivating Biography
- By Jean on 11-20-17
By: Jason Fagone
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American Sketches
- Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Cotter Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this collection of essays, Walter Isaacson reflects on the lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and various other interesting characters he has chronicled as a biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, in most cases, but that is not the secret of their success.
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Not Really Sketches
- By DAVID on 11-04-11
By: Walter Isaacson
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In the Enemy's House
- The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Gardner discovered that the KGB was running an extensive network of strategically placed spies inside the United States, whose goal was to infiltrate American intelligence and steal the nation's military and atomic secrets. Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage - the atomic bomb.
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Excellent non-fiction spy story
- By Katherine on 10-13-18
By: Howard Blum
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The Aleppo Codex
- A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible
- By: Matti Friedman
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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A true-life thriller about the journey of one of the world's most precious manuscripts - the 10th-century annotated Hebrew Bible known as the Aleppo Codex - from its hiding place in an ancient Syrian synagogue to the newly founded Israel. Using his research, including documents that have been secret for 50 years and interviews with key players, AP correspondent Friedman tells a story of political upheaval, international intrigue, charged courtroom battles, obsession, and subterfuge.
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don't quess at pronunciation of foreign words
- By dlb on 05-28-12
By: Matti Friedman
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God's Jury
- The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Cullen Murphy
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Inquisition conducted its last execution in 1826-the victim was a Spanish schoolmaster convicted of heresy. But as Cullen Murphy shows in this provocative new work, not only did its offices survive into the twentieth century, in the modern world its spirit is more influential than ever.
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A balanced review based on new material
- By Sean on 05-15-12
By: Cullen Murphy
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A More Perfect Heaven
- How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos
- By: Dava Sobel
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In her graceful, compelling style, Dava Sobel chronicles the history of the Copernican Revolution, relating the story of astronomy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages. In its midst will be her play, And the Sun Stood Still, imagining the dialogue that would have transpired between Rheticus and Copernicus in their months together. As she achieved with her bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Sobel expands the bounds of science writing, giving us an unforgettable portrait of scientific achievement.
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Interesting but Not Perfect
- By John on 09-01-12
By: Dava Sobel
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The Immortal Game
- A History of Chess
- By: David Shenk
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Why has one game, alone among the thousands of games invented and played throughout human history, not only survived but thrived within every culture it has touched? What is it about its 32 figurative pieces, moving about its 64 black and white squares according to very simple rules, that has captivated people for nearly 1,500 years? Why has it driven some of its greatest players into paranoia and madness, and yet is hailed as a remarkably powerful intellectual tool?
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Buy in print
- By Ivy Reisner on 08-30-11
By: David Shenk
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109 East Palace
- Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos
- By: Jennet Conant
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
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They were told as little as possible. Their orders were to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and report for work at a classified Manhattan Project site, a location so covert it was known to them only by the mysterious address: 109 East Palace.
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Great Listen
- By John H. Davis III on 10-22-05
By: Jennet Conant
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Tuxedo Park
- A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II
- By: Jennet Conant
- Narrated by: John Kroft
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the late 1930s, legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the 20th century at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.
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Fantastic book, weak technical execution
- By Paul on 10-13-18
By: Jennet Conant
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The Clockwork Universe
- Isaac Newton, The Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.
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Calculus Ergo Modernity
- By Nelson Alexander on 07-09-11
By: Edward Dolnick
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The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior
- Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Cesare Borgia - three iconic figures whose intersecting lives provide the basis for this astonishing work of narrative history. They could not have been more different, and they would meet only for a short time in 1502, but the events that transpired when they did would significantly alter each man's perceptions - and the course of Western history.
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A Very Good Book (Just Not As Good As Others)
- By George Monnat Jr on 02-18-19
By: Paul Strathern
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The Chaos Imperative
- How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success
- By: Ori Brafman, Judah Pollack
- Narrated by: Drew Birdseye
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Ori Brafman and management consultant Judah Pollack dramatically demonstrate how even the best and most efficient organizations - from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army - can become more innovative by allowing a little unstructured space and "contained chaos" into their planning and decision-making. Through their consulting work, they realized that while structure and hierarchy are essential both in large corporations and small groups, too much of either can stifle creativity.
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a must read!!
- By Kelly Pavich on 05-26-19
By: Ori Brafman, and others
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The Atomic Bazaar
- The Rise of the Nuclear Poor
- By: William Langewiesche
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In his shocking and revelatory new work, celebrated journalist William Langewiesche investigates the burgeoning threat of nuclear-weapons production and the inexorable drift of nuclear-weapons technology from the hands of the rich into the hands of the poor. As more unstable and undeveloped nations acquire the ultimate arms, the stakes of state-sponsored nuclear activity have soared to frightening heights. Even more disturbing is the likelihood of such weapons being used by guerrilla non-state terrorists.
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A Review
- By Mitch Emswiller on 05-31-08
What listeners say about Bursts
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rurik McKaiser
- 07-20-21
Definitely worth a read.
Whilst I really enjoyed the book over all, I found the many meanderings a tad distracting at times.
Awesome insights and wonderful questions now swim in my mind as I journey towards my PhD.
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Overall
- Matthew
- 05-20-10
Interesting premise, but too long
Meanders into several barely relevant and uninteresting historical stories. The basic thesis is interesting, but the whole thing should have been condensed by an editor into a much shorter book.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Karel
- 09-26-10
Lots of words
Few bursts of good ideas.
Barabasi talks a lot about himself and his family's history. Much less about what can be predicted from Bursts.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Alex
- 10-01-18
large swaths of irrelevant bits
the book is punctuated with long sections detailing medieval Transylvanian politics, and while the author tried to pull it together at the end, he mostly fails, so it's basically half filler. Those parts detract from the interesting parts that resemble his other book Connected, which I expected to be the focus.
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Overall
- Charles Floading
- 05-17-10
Very few Bursts of actual science
I was a big fan of Barabasi's first book, "Linked," and bought "Bursts" the minute I saw it without looking for reviews or anything. I regret that impulsive burst. This book is made up of only a small amount of science, the majority is history.
He tries to shoehorn a long and painstakingly detailed description of a 16th century peasant's revolt into his thesis that human behaviors and actions come in bursts. (It quickly becomes clear that this story is important to the author because it takes place in the country of his birth. Unfortunately, he fails to connect it with anything scientific.) Even the discussions of science are largely chronicles of what happened, but with little scientific analysis. We hear about how the author researched Einstein's letter writing habits, or how time and again some simple mathematical model failed to explain the complex behaviors of people and animals.
The book's main premise is unfulfilled. He claims that the science of "bursty" behaviors will allow us to predict human action. He describes dozens of cases, but never brings it all together. Because Linked was such a good book, I gave Barabasi the benefit of the doubt all the way to the end, but I came away feeling that this was the rough notes for what could be a good book.
The book is not a total loss, though. If I had been interested in a history lesson (sometimes I am!) this would have been a much more enjoyable listen. The writing is clear and direct. And the reader does a very good job.
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10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Robert
- 07-06-10
bursting into tears
10 hours and twenty dollars later I am angry. Not at
the author but at an editor that allowed this
wandering mess to be published. I don't often start
yelling "get to the point", when I am alone in my
house listening to a book. I have no idea what this
author was trying to accomplish.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Crafty
- 05-26-10
Lotta Sizzle...little steak
This book has lots of "stuff"...but I'm not sure I was able to pull much of it together into something I could walk away with. Wrapping physics, human behavior and social networking around Medieval Hungarian history was entriguing...but never really reached a conclusion or made a point. This could have been 2 seperate books...One about Bursts and the other about history.
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4 people found this helpful