Social network ties represent an important and complex confluence of sundry social processes and their consequences. It is an enduring fact of life that the more socially connected a person is, the better off they are. This goes for well-being, for health, for social stature, for popularity and prestige, for social mobility, and for access to material resources. Social connections give people power. They plug people into a switchboard of opportunities and resources, making them part of a resource-rich social system. Social connections liberate people from the stringencies of what might otherwise be stultifying conditions of everyday life. They create trust and produce the capacity for collective action to deal with local and regional social problems. They help people live longer lives. And social connections generally make life more fun, and richer, in every sense of those terms. It is a bundle of benefits that cannot be unwound. This introductory chapter lays out the primary motivation behind this book, which is an attempt to understand whether everyone has equal access to these valuable social resources, and whether they are so potent as to substitute for other valuable resources, such as wealth and prestige, in shaping people’s life chances.