Networks are all around us. Our brain is a network of cells and cells themselves are networks of molecules. Societies are networks of people and on a larger scale, food webs and ecosystems are networks of species.

Networks are not just prevalent in nature but also in many manmade structures, like power grids, transportation systems and the Internet. In October 2005, Manuel Lima, an interaction designer and researcher, founded VisualComplexity.com, a comprehensive repository of complex network visualisations. From an initial collection of roughly 80 projects, the website quickly grew to encompass over 700 projects, with a goal to facilitate a critical understanding of a spectrum of network visualisation methods.

This book analyses, collects and presents some of the most interesting examples of information graphics in a single volume. Never before have we felt so strongly the notion of living in a highly interdependent world, where everything appears to be connected to everything else