Who is Government?
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  • Published: 18 March 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241778876
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $65.00

Who is Government?

The Untold Story of Public Service

Formats & editions
Hardback
18 Mar 2025
EBook
18 Mar 2025
Audiobook
18 Mar 2025
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Who works for the government and why does their work matter? An urgent and absorbing journey into a hidden world from an all-star team of writers and storytellers

The government is a vast, complex system that citizens 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 favourite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them in a special in-depth series for the Washington Post. 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.
  • Published: 18 March 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241778876
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $65.00
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About the author

Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics. He has written several books including the New York Times bestsellers Liar's Poker, widely considered the book that defined Wall Street during the 1980s, and The Big Short, 'probably the single best piece of financial journalism ever written' (Reuters). Lewis is contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and also writes for Vanity Fair and Portfolio Magazine.

portrait photo of Michael Lewis

Also by Michael Lewis

Flash Boys
Going Infinite
The Premonition
The Fifth Risk
The Undoing Project
Home Game
Panic!
See all

Praise for Who is Government?

This book rightly focuses on the quiet heroes who represent public service at its best... Musk’s demolition derby makes this kind of journalism feel, more than ever, like a civic duty... This eye-opening, multifaceted ode to public service therefore feels both urgent and moving

Dorian Lynskey, Guardian

A vivid and important collection of essays that corrects the caricatures and shows the value of public servants... these are vivid stories, identifying unusual and low-profile work requiring great levels of commitment and expertise... these stories refute the suggestion that the only role of public services is to correct markets... public services create good, even great, outcomes for society

Paschal Donohoe, The Irish Times

As a celebration of the quiet heroism of those whose painstaking work is being laidwaste by Elon Musk’s chainsaw, it’s powerful

The FT

A timely reminder of the quiet dedication and skill of the people who work every day to make this country work

Barack Obama, President Obama's 2025 Summer Reads

Riveting, jaw-dropping, stranger and more terrifying than fiction

Daily Telegraph

Life is what happens between Michael Lewis books. I forgot to breathe while reading The Fifth Risk' Michael Hofmann

TLS, Books of the Year

Stunning

Josh Glancy, Sunday Times

The characters are riveting, and the drama intense ... paints a picture of America being not just pulled apart at the political seams, but in the very fabric of the government itself

Harriet Alexander, Daily Telegraph

Exciting, entertaining, darkly funny

Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

Readable and compelling ... a horrific catalogue of all the things that can go wrong if a government takes its eye off the ball ... We should all be frightened

Brooke Masters, Financial Times

Praise for The Fifth Risk

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