Carl Djerassi crafts a shrewd collection of comedies of manners, exposing the foibles of elite tribes—business executives, chefs, scientists, professors, musicians, and other clever characters. They spar in battles of one-upmanship using class, education, gender, or prestige as their weapons, sometimes leaving damaged bystanders in their wake but sometimes finding their superiority deflated by unexpected turns of events.

Carl Djerassi (1923–2015) was the author of many novels, plays, essays, poetry, and short stories published in twenty languages. Renowned as both a writer and a scientist, he was an emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University and the recipient of thirty honorary doctorates as well as many international scientific honors. His books published by the University of Wisconsin Press are: How I Beat Coca-Cola and Other Tales of One-Upmanship; Foreplay: Hannah Arendt, the Two Adornos, and Walter Benjamin; Sex in an Age of Technological Reproduction:? "ICSI" and "Taboos"; and A Diary of Pique 1983–1984 / Ein Tagebuch des Grolls 1983–1984.

“One of the pleasures of Carl Djerassi’s witty, richly detailed stories is that they have the rare merit of letting us look into some special works—art, science—that are usually closed to writers who are only writers. The pen of the trained observer is as acute as his eye.”—Diane Johnson, author of L’Affaire

“These stories describe abstract conflicts, jockeying for prestige, or social interactions seen as complexes of negotiation, and the pleasure they give is akin to that of being taken through a skillful game of chess by an explicitly authoritative commentator.”—Colin Greenland, Times Literary Supplement