Jack Vinson comments on Valdis Krebs social network analysis of politicos' book-buying habits.

. One of the cardinal rules of human networks is "Birds of a feather flock together". Friends of friends become friends, and coworkers of coworkers become colleagues. Dense clusters of connections emerge throughout the social space. The usual pattern found throughout social structures [and many other complex systems] is dense intra-connectivity within clusters with sparse inter-connectivity between clusters.

Essentially, in Krebs' analysis, Conservatives bought Conservative books, and Liberals bought Liberal ones. And as per the quote above, there was pretty much no overlap as you can see below. [Sorry Jack, I've shamelessly nicked your shrunken image]

Anyway, two points.

One, as I commented on Jack's blog, I think this highlights the importance of reading something that you know nothing about or that you find distasteful/wrong now and then. Keeps the mind a little less narrow.

Two, when you look at the titles of these political books you can sort of see the antinomy even if you don't know what they're about. And what made me laugh was the ones in the middle. Sleeping with the Devil seems to be a book to read whichever political camp you're in.