The life cycles of everything in the world - from plants and animals to the cities in which we live - are governed by universal hidden laws. One of the most authoritative scientists of our time, whose research revolutionized science, talks about these laws—the laws of scaling. “This book is about a unified and unifying system of concepts that would address some of the biggest challenges and questions we grapple with today, from rapid urbanization, population growth, and global sustainability to understanding the nature of cancer, metabolism, and the causes of aging and death. . About the remarkable similarities between the operating principles of cities, companies and our own bodies, and why they are all variations of a common theme, and their organization, structure and dynamics exhibit similarities with amazing systematicity. What they all have in common is that they are all, be they molecules, cells or humans, extremely complex systems consisting of a huge number of individual components interconnected, interacting and evolving using network structures that exist on several different spatial and temporal scales... » Jeffrey West