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"Hack Your Bureaucracy" is written as a series of short chapters (usually less than 10 pages), each providing a specific tactic that can be used to work within a bureaucracy. Each chapter, in turn, is followed by a "How Can I Use This" section that summarizes what was covered in the preceding chapter. The structure of the book thus lends itself to either classroom-style teaching or to reading each tactic individually and reflecting upon it for the rest of the day. This is a methodical read, like reading an auto repair manual or technical how-to guide.

The authors -- Marina Nitze, former Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, and Nick Sinai, former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer -- are part of a small but growing cottage industry of former Obama staffers and appointees with increasingly public thoughts on how to best manage bureaucracy. Bloodied by the initial failed launch of HealthCare.gov and other high-profile technology projects during the '10s, a number of former Obama technologists have written books or articles detailing how things should have been different in the first place -- and how they successfully overcame the obstacles in front of them to achieve some wins after all.

Given their failures and successes of deploying technology solutions within the confines of the U.S. federal bureaucracy as it existed in the '10s, there are many lessons to be learned. Though the exercise in sharing those lessons feels somewhat self-serving ("Look at all we had to struggle through to do the simplest of things!" "Look at how much we accomplished despite it all!"), it also serves as an insightful lens into what working with the federal bureaucracy feels like to those who don't have the luxury of dedicating their lives towards optimizing their professional behavior to it.

The advice itself is well written, easy to follow, and is reasonably sensible.

Given the nature of programming languages in the late '60s, it's understandable why a writer might believe learning one could drive you insane.

Babel-17 was written almost sixty years ago and, in many places, it shows. The future has intergalactic space travel alongside punch cards, payphones and paper files. There are references to now-dated programming languages, such as Algol and Fortran. Rydra Wong — an East Asian female protagonist written during a time when sci-fi protagonists were usually white and male — is a Mary Sue who knows everything and charms everyone, but look, so was Heinlein's Lazarus Long.

Underneath the uneven pacing of the action and the inescapable sense that the heroine is the only one who could possibly know what's going on, however, is an interesting question: Can learning a new language shift your perspective of the universe? Could learning a specific language radically shift your sense of time and sense of self? If so, by how much? What would the consequences of that shift be?

Babel-17 is full of interesting questions and ideas — or, at least, questions and ideas that were interesting and radical when it was published in 1966. To its credit, it doesn't waste hundreds of pages and hours of the reader's time to raise them.

If you're thinking of reading this book for its philosophical insights, I recommend playing "Disco Elysium" and then reading David Chapman's Meaningness.com. Both hit the same beats with better precision and entertainment value.

As a cultural slice of life, it has considerably more value. The book captures the spirit of the early '70s — an era in which top-down systemic thinking had passed its zenith, yet the childish nihilism of the hippies offered no useful alternatives. The author, a former technical writer, tries his best to synthesize the zeitgeist, blending half-remembered pieces of Buddhism, bits of misremembered Greek philosophy (Lycus, not Phaedras, is named after the wolf), and a rebellion against academia into the world's first LessWrong post.

It would be the longest until HPMOR was authored decades later.

Given everything I said above, it may seem odd to give it three stars instead of two or only one. As I said earlier, however, it accurately captures the spirit of the '70s. It was popular — incredibly so. The bits of philosophy, musings on mental health, and surprisingly sparse instructions on how to maintain a motorcycle (they don't build them like they used to and thank goodness for that) are a snapshot of an age that still echoes into the present day.