Networks are a critical element of an effective civic society, at every scale from local communities to international relations. Like so much else, they are both challenged by wider social and economic change (some of the key traditional roles in holding communities together fade away) and given fresh impetus by it (in an ever more connected world). This interview introduces a book which sets out to reset the balance between getting things done through making strategic moves and getting them done by supporting, sustaining and using networks. Though as a couple of critical reviews on Amazon bring out, the book is inevitably as much a product of a network as the phenomena it describes.