As long as power has existed, everyone has been interested in people in power for just as long. It is they – civil servants, functionaries of various levels, apparatchiks, masters of office and corridor games – who populate the pages of “A Short Course in Scientific Careerism.” The genre of the book is unusual: under the guise of lessons taught to those who want to achieve success, writer and journalist Mikhail Shcherbachenko tells stories that develop into a full-blooded and witty essay on the morals of modern domestic bureaucracy. You can trust the author - he himself was a high-ranking official and knows that in this closed world a person has to follow the sometimes contrary to his nature, but immutable rules of official life. Otherwise you won’t be able to climb the career ladder.