Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underly everything from supply chains and airplane schedules to dating site matches. We strive for efficiency in our daily lives, obsessed with productivity and optimal performance. This sharp, character-driven narrative traces the history of optimization from its roots in America's founding principles through the work of Manhattan project scientists, Silicon Valley techno-utopians, lifestyle gurus, oil tycoons, wildlife ecologists, sugar beet farmers, and poker players. It turns a keen eye to the technologies and mathematical assumptions that have come to underlie not just our material reality, but what we make of it.