Pajek means spider in Slovenian. Pajek is also a software program for the analysis and visualisation of very large networks; networks with thousands if not millions of vertices. It is a program I use occasionally, however I prefer UCINET and NetMiner 3 , because I find these programs to be easier to use. It is precisely for this reason I bought and read “Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek ” by Wouter de Nooy, Andrej Mrvar, and Vladimir Batagelj.

The book is an easy read and nicely complements the manual – in fact I think it could easily replace the manual. I learnt that Pajek is actually quite a bite easier to use than I first thought. Having played around with Pajek after reading the book I found I could manipulate my datasets in new ways. That said I am not a convert to Pajek - it's still too clunky for my liking.

I did like the examples and the explanations that went with them. Even if I never use Pajek again the book is useful simply because the examples explain rather than describe many of the complexities and pitfalls of network analysis. Read in conjunction with other publications like Wassermann and Faust’s “Social Network Analysis. Methods and Applications” the student of network analysis should gain a solid theoretical understanding of network analysis and be able to read network studies more critically. I also found the many exercises in the book most useful. They progressively built and reinforced understanding and competence in Pajek, as well as understanding of network ideas.

So all in all I would give the book a five-star rating – five stars for readability and five stars for the learning by doing approach. It has a place on the bookshelf of every serious student of network analysis.

Regards, Graham