What links slime moulds and Gennifer Flowers鈥檚 relationship with Bill Clinton? Steven Johnson鈥檚 exhilarating Emergence (Penguin, 拢6.99) explains, in a wonderfully lucid account of complexity theory and the self-organising power of apparently chaotic systems. He shows how bees swarm and cities grow; why crowds need no leader to act in unison; how brainless slime moulds can figure out a maze 鈥� and the amazing truth about how America鈥檚 media bosses decided to suppress Clinton鈥檚 fling, but still saw it top the news the next night.
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