The big picture -- The measure of all things: an introduction to scaling -- The simplicity, unity, and complexity of life -- The fourth dimension of life: growth, aging, and death -- From the Anthropocene to the Urbanocene: a planet dominated by cities -- Prelude to a science of cities -- Toward a science of cities -- Consequences and predictions: from mobility and the pace of life to social connectivity, diversity, metabolism, and growth -- Toward a science of companies -- The vision of a grand unified theory of sustainability

"Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks... Fascinated by issues of aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science, creating a new understanding of energy use and metabolism: West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other... West's work has been gaming changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his work's applicability...and applied...[it] to the business and social world."--