Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service

In his Introduction, Michael Lewis describes discovering a rich source of untapped journalistic material within federal agencies following Donald Trump’s first election victory. After Trump dismantled his transition team and appointed officials like Rick Perry (who had previously advocated eliminating the Energy Department he would now lead), Lewis realized that the new administration lacked fundamental knowledge about the government it would oversee—a knowledge gap that Lewis himself shared.

Recognizing a journalistic opportunity, Lewis explored various federal departments, encountering dedicated civil servants performing vital work. He published his findings as magazine articles and later compiled them into a book titled The Fifth Risk, which sold 10 times better than expected. Surprisingly, despite this success, other writers did not rush to mine similar stories from government agencies.

Who Is Government? continues Lewis’s exploration and includes six additional writers: Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell. Their essays, initially published in The Washington Post, attracted substantial readership despite their extensive length. Lewis proposes several reasons why these stories remain underreported: declining media resources for long-form journalism, government agencies’ inability to effectively communicate their achievements, civil servants’ tendency to avoid publicity, and the persistent

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