Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service

by Michael Lewis (Editor)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The United States government employs nearly three million people, but what do they all do? This exploration of government service is as fascinating as it is illuminating.

“Michael Lewis has this incredible ability to zoom in on one person's story, and from there reveals something much bigger about our culture. His books leave you seeing the world differently, and his books about federal workers are no exception.” – Katie Couric

Who works for the government and why does their work matter? An urgent and absorbing civics lesson from an all-star team of writers and storytellers.

The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.

Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, to join him in finding someone doing an interesting job for the government and writing about them. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.

Whether they’re digitizing archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these public servants are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. Expanding on the Washington Post series, the vivid profiles in Who Is Government? blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798217047802
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	645
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Fifth Risk, and Going Infinite. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

Date of Birth:

October 15, 1960

Place of Birth:

New Orleans, LA

Education:

Princeton University, B.A. in Art History, 1982; London School of Economics, 1985

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Who Is Government?

"Terrific." —New York Times

“Lewis has done it again.” —LitHub

"A spirited rebuttal to the canard that federal civil servants are nest-featherers up to no good. . . .
All the contributions. . . press the point that the government’s work is useful—and no one else but government workers are likely to do it. Compelling arguments against ideologues bent on dismantling the government." —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2025-01-16
Deep state, shmeep state: a spirited rebuttal to the canard that federal civil servants are nest-featherers up to no good.

“The fact is that federal employees go to work every day with the explicit job description of making the lives of everyday Americans better.” So writes W. Kamau Bell, one of the writers drawn into thisWashington Post project to explore the federal workforce and the things its members do in their daily labors. As volume editor Lewis notes, thePost series, although about eight times larger than the usual feature, saw a fourfold increase in readership—perhaps not so surprising, given that D.C. is a company town, but noteworthy in that the series painstakingly showed readers the myriad ways in which government is not the demonized bugaboo of Reagan and Trump supporters. What do the people of the Department of Agriculture do? Lewis asks and answers: “They preserve rural America from extinction, among other things.” Lewis, best known for his 2003 bookMoneyball, profiles a mine inspector at the Department of Labor who, committed to making mining safer, developed protocols and technologies such as the “stability factor” to do just that, even though “industry executives…made it clear…that they viewed safety as a subject for wimps and losers.” The National Cemetery Administration, writes Casey Cep, may be unknown, but its 2,300-odd employees “bury more than 140,000 veterans and their family members each year” while tending the graves of more than 4 million veterans. Dave Eggers visits the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is quietly asking questions about life in the universe, sending out spacecraft and monitoring the heavens while employing some of the best minds in the world—about a third of them women. All the contributions similarly press the point that the government’s work is useful—and no one else but government workers are likely to do it.

Compelling arguments against ideologues bent on dismantling the government.

Kirkus Reviews