The (Delicate) Art of Bureaucracy

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

As you can imagine, we are exhausted here at Exothermic Press, having finally wrangled Mark Schwartz’s new book into the space between two covers. If you know Mr. Schwartz’s writing, you will not be surprised to hear that this book’s ideas kept expanding along all nine known dimensions of the universe (I speak of those posited by string theory), so this task required hearty geometric exertions. We had to cut the chapter on “Bureaucracy and Ballet” and an unfinished one on “Quantum Bureaucracy,” but perhaps they’ll turn up in a later book.

You will notice something new in this book comparari prioribus: I have done my best to annotate some of Schwartz’s more far-flung leaps of imagination to make sure they are accessible ...