The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success
(Little, Brown, $29)
True success, “that most mysterious of forces,” arguably came to Albert Einstein by chance, said Reed Tucker in the New York Post. Late in Albert-Lászlo Barabási’s new book, the networks guru recounts how Einstein was a relative unknown when he arrived in America in 1921 and two reporters who met his ship in Manhattan to ask him about his theory of relativity were surprised to see him greeted by a crowd of 20,000. By the next day, the physicist and his theory were front-page news and on their way to lasting acclaim—even though the reporters simply hadn’t realized that the throngs had gathered to cheer a Jewish political activist Einstein was traveling with. It would be easy to attribute Einstein’s overnight fame to the fickleness of fate. But Barabási argues that a handful of laws govern whether a person is actually recognized and rewarded for his or her achievements. The first rule is simple, said Mark Buchanan in Nature. In fields where differences in performance can’t be easily measured— such as art or writing—networks drive success. We heap credit on individuals who’ve already been identified by others as achievers, and this spread of enthusiasm explains why two people of virtually identical skills can achieve vastly different levels of success. The networking effects Barabási describes mimic cracks spreading in concrete—“unstable cascades” about which predictions can be made using statistical physics, one of the author’s special-