In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems

The entire premise of Parisi’s tome is this: that both citizens and politicians need to trust scientists and allow the scientific community to assist in making objectively sensible decisions, for everything from climate change to the COVID pandemic. Nobel Prize in Physics winner Parisi (theoretical physics, Sapienza Univ. of Rome) enthusiastically guides readers on a journey traversing the fields of statistical and experimental physics. The author is happy to travel down memory lane—from his roots as a physics student in Italy 50 years ago to the time when he narrowly missed an opportunity to further explore order and disorder as found in nature and experienced in a wide variety of circumstances. While each chapter might feel like its own in-depth lesson or anecdote, the summations are wise and bring readers back to the author’s original premise: people must trust science (and scientists) to make recommendations on how to improve the earth’s circumstances going forward.