Includes bibliographical references.

Machine generated contents note: 1.End the Attachment! -- 2.Sauerkraut and Mace -- 3.News Is Marketing -- 4.Nothing About You Is Bad -- 5.Plight of the Bookworm -- 6.Art Is Despair with Dignity -- 7.Releasing the Tool -- 8.Eight Knots -- 9.The Stoic Glacier Method -- 10.War Cash -- 11.The Speechless Others -- 12.The Passenger Years -- 13.The Animal Rule -- 14.The Nutkinistas -- 15.I Melt with You -- 16.Never the Same Again -- 17.Offense Is Mandatory -- 18.The CURS -- 19.Maybe Yes, Maybe No -- 20.Something Bad Must Have Happened -- 21.Can You Patent the Sun? -- 22.The Man-Squirrel Debate -- 23.Hello in There -- 24.Doomed to Wonder -- 25.The Cyborg -- 26.We Can Be Together -- 27.See for Yourself.

Set in and around Palo Alto, amid the culture clash of new money and old (anti-establishment) values,this book is an unforgettable look at the way we live now. A young couple on the brink of marriage--the charming Veblen and her fiance Paul, a brilliant neurologist--find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other's dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tete-a-tete with a very charismatic squirrel.