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Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service Audiobook
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Publisher Description
“Perhaps never before has there been a book better timed or more urgent.” —Washington Post
One of President Obama's 2025 Summer Reads
As seen on CBS Mornings, CNN Anderson Cooper, ABC News Live, MSNBC Morning Joe, and many more
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.
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“Casey Cep uses a journalistic tone that, nonetheless, conveys her genuine admiration for a remarkable Veterans Affairs employee…For a change of pace, W. Kamau Bell effectively uses the interview format with a young Black woman who is starting her career…But the real star here is Lewis himself, who bookends the collection with two engaging essays delivered with the polish of a veteran podcaster.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“This eye-opening, multifaceted ode to public service…feels both urgent and moving.”
— The Guardian (London) -
“This exploration of government service is as fascinating as it is illuminating.”
— Barnes&Noble.com -
“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
Awards
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A New York Times Bestseller
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A #1 Amazon Bestseller
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A New York Times Bestseller in Audio
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About the Authors
John Lanchester is a contributing
editor at the London Review of Books,
and his work has appeared in the New York
Times, New Yorker, and Observer, among others. He has won the
Whitbread and Hawthornden Awards, as well as being awarded the 2008 E. M.
Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in London.
Dave Eggers is the author of children’s fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, and more. His works have won the Newbery Medal, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France’s Prix Médicis, Germany’s Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company based in San Francisco, and is cofounder of 826 National, a network of educational centers around the country offering free tutoring to kids of all backgrounds.
W. Kamau Bell is a sociopolitical comedian who is the host of the Emmy-nominated hit CNN documentary series United Shades of America. Previously he was best known for his critically acclaimed FX comedy series Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, which was was nominated for both an NAACP Award and a GLAAD Award. He is also the host of Kamau Right Now!, a public radio talk show that airs on NPR radio station KALW in San Francisco, and a cohost of the podcasts Politically Re-Active and the memorably named Denzel Washington Is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period.
Geraldine Brooks is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March and numerous New York Times bestsellers. Caleb's Crossing won the New England Book Award for Fiction and the Christianity Today Book Award and was a finalist for the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction. She has also written the acclaimed nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.
Sarah Vowell is a contributing editor for public radio’s This American Life and has written for Time, Esquire, GQ, Spin, Salon, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. She is the author of Radio On, Take the Cannoli, and The Partly Cloudy Patriot. She lives in New York City.
Michael Lewis is the New York Times bestselling author of several books. His global bestselling books lift the lid on the biggest stories of our time. They include Flash Boys, an exposé of high-speed scamming; The Big Short, which was made into a Oscar-winning film; Liar’s Poker, the book that defined the excesses of the 1980s; The Fifth Risk, revealing what happens when democracy unravels, and The Premonition, one of the first books to take account of the coronavirus pandemic. He was educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics.
CASEY N. CEP’S work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic, among many other publications. After graduating from Harvard she earned an M.Phil. at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Cep studied ministry at Yale Divinity School and has delivered guest sermons at churches along the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where she lives. This is her first book.