In this book, Nobel Prize winner Pierre-Gilles de Gennes wittily captures the lives of personalities from both the academic and the industrial world in delightful bite-size stories. Most of the characters in this collection are like those in Aesop's fables, but in modern-day research settings. The book provides a critical account of aberrations (fortunately rare) of the scientific community. Many lessons can be drawn from the stories. For the young researcher, this book is like a telescope: for seeing other human beings beyond his or her laboratory. For the administrator, this book is like a microscope for seeing inside the human beings huge and complex structures.