A NOTE ON ORGANIZATION
I wish to reassure the modern reader that this book meets your requirements. It is composed of 55 discrete articles, tables, and figures, and like almanacs and experimental Latin American novels of old, you are encouraged to read them in any order, skipping them as you please, and following narrative threads of your own weaving. The footnotes will only point out the most obvious thematic echoes and authorial redundancies.
That said, all effort has been made to provide a satisfying experience to the old-fashioned reader who chooses to read from start to finish. For example, the pages have been numbered in the order in which they appear, they have also been fashioned out of light paper for easy turning by frail hands. Good luck, old-timer. I hope you enjoy yourself.
A NOTE ON SPORTS
Please note that there are only two references to sports in this book. They are on pages 71 and 95, and both are appropriately dismissive. If you wish for sports information, might I kindly refer you to every other aspect of our culture?

Table of Contents
Title Page
Good Evening
A Note on Organization
A Note on Sports
Table of Contents
Table of Tables
Table of Figures
What Will Happen in the Future
--(including: On Actuaries and Their Tattoos)
Information You Will Find Useful in the Present
--(including: How to Write a Book: The Fifty-Five Dramatic Situations; A Clarification Regarding the Dramatic Situation in Which Humans Fight Animals; Basics of Snow and Ice Warfare; Hints on Building Snow Forts; Diversions for the Asthmatic Child Who Cannot Play in the Snow)
What You Did Not Know About the Past
-- (including: History's Worst Men's Haircuts; A Brief Time Line of the Lobster in America; Prohibition-Era Euphemisms for Alcohol; Some Prophets Who Were Not Actuaries)
What You Did Not Know About Hoboes
Futher Information You Can Use Today
-- (inclding: Short Words for Use on Submarines to Preserve Oxygen; Secrets of Yale University; Debated Planets; The States, Their Nicknames and Mottoes, and Other Facts Critical to Safe Travel)
There Is More to the Past Than You Thought
-- (including: Nine Presidents Who Had Hooks for Hands; Colonial Jobs Involving Eels)
Good Morning
A Special Bonus Excerpt From My Next Book
Table of Tables
Table of Figures

-- Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar: woven into a carpet that could be read from any direction.
-- Dubliners by James Joyce: initially telegraphed as the last message from the Titanic. (Technically, this was a series of linked short stories, the last entitled "Please Save Us From Drowning.")
-- Sesslyu by Knut Nims: actually composed of the words of Ulysses arranged backward. Nims never bothered to write it out this way, instead claming that whenever Ulysses was read backward, it was officially his work, and he deserved a royalty.

-- Yale was built by Elihu Yale with his own hands out of mud. (Somewhat true).
-- The world is secretly controlled by Skull and Bones. (Not true at all. NOT AT ALL.)
... And it is also true that Skull and Bones was originally chartered by the Illuminati and Knights Templar in order to infiltrate the Secret World Government at Yale's New Haven campus. But having failed to make any progress in this goal, the Bonesmen now focus almost exclusively on tending to the pterodactyls on their private island and on ritual masturbation.
-- Yale enforces its will on the world via a capella singing groups. (Absolutely true.)
-- The first submarine was invented at Yale and still patrols its underwater canals. (True.)
-- The Whiffenpoofs stole the Hope Diamond and presented it to Dick Cavett when they were guests on his television program in 1970. (False.)
It was the crystal skull of Alexander Hamilton.
-- Every year one student is randomly assigned to live in an extremely luxurious room made of solid gold. (True.)
-- Yale is the seat of the Secret World Government. (True.)
There is no Secret World Government

FAST FACTS ABOUT PHILADELPHIA:
-- The word "Philadelphia," from the Greek, literally means "Pennsylvania."
-- It has the highest number, per capita, of Benjamin Franklin impersonaters in the country.
-- Someday all of the Benjamin Franklin impersonators will fight all of the Mark Twain impersonators, flooding valleys and destroying whole towns in their wake, until nothing is left.
-- Harrison Ford lives here and protects Amish children.
-- Bryn Mawr Colllege, a small but esteemed school of witchcraft and wizardry in the city's western suburbs, is somtimes visible by day.
-- Philadelphia is at the cutting edge of some of ttoday's most exciting new developments in sandwich technology. The sandwiches here are so large and complex and sublime that they contain whole philosophies. Some have the complete oral tradition of several ancient cultures hidden within the roll alone.
-- Philadelphia was one of the thirteen East Coast cities called "home" by Edgar Allan Poe, and it was here that he hosted the first of his many Christmas Literary Extravaganzas. Held in 1839, it was, by contemporary accounts, a grand affair, involving feats of literary memorization and drunken sword canery, and a chorus line of murderous orangutans. Poe was dressed as Santa Claus, but at this point in his career this was hardly unusual. After reciting "Tamerlane," he famously brought out his child bride Virginia and seated her on his lap. "What would you like from Santa this year?" he asked. And she replied, "The modern detective story." And so he invented it then and there, writing "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" using only a checkerboard, a bottle of brandy, and a map of Paris. At this point, the police chased Poe back to Baltimore.