edited by Michael Lewis

Summary

Ask most people to picture a federal employee, and they will not picture a mine-safety engineer, a cybercrime investigator, or the archivist tracking down a veteran's lost benefits. Who Is Government? exists to fix that picture. Michael Lewis gathers seven essays, originally a series in The Washington Post, from writers including Dave Eggers, Geraldine Brooks, and Sarah Vowell, each profiling a federal worker whose job rarely makes headlines until something goes wrong.

The through-line is not ideology but evidence: competence, dedication, and quiet public responsibility, essay after essay. Lewis and his contributors make the case that good government does not run itself. It depends on people who choose to serve, usually without recognition. At a moment when trust in institutions is low and the civil service faces active efforts to shrink it, the book asks readers to reconsider what government actually does, and what gets lost when that work goes unseen.