Pappano, a journalist who writes an education column for The Boston globe , draws on personal experience as well as academic studies and observations of media and consumer habits to ponder modern life, when people are hyperconnected through e-mail, voice mail, cell phones, and fax machines and yet feel disconnected from each other and their communities. Looking at the benefits and drawbacks of technology, she considers the ways most Americans are leading more solitary and inwardly focused lives, and how they might begin closing the space that's opened up between them. "The Connection Gap," she writes, "is here not because we invited it but because we have not pushed it away. The challenge seems daunting, and yet the solution is straightforward: Only connect." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)