Who Is Government?
Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and The Big Short, edits and contributes to this collection of essays about the people inside the federal government whose work almost no one notices. Each writer, a lineup that includes Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, and Geraldine Brooks, profiles a different public servant, from a mine-safety investigator to the archivist tracking down lost data. Together the pieces make a quiet argument: the government is not a faceless machine but a vast collection of dedicated people, and we only notice their work when it fails.
Also by Michael Lewis
What you might want to know about Who Is Government?
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Michael Lewis gathers a group of acclaimed writers to profile the unglamorous civil servants who quietly keep the federal government running.
Who Is Government? is a collection edited by Michael Lewis, with essays by several writers. It grew out of a series Lewis created for The Washington Post and was published in 2025.
No. Michael Lewis edited the collection and wrote part of it, but the essays come from several writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, and Geraldine Brooks.
Who Is Government? was written by Michael Lewis, published in 2025 by Riverhead Books.
Who Is Government? is 272 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Who Is Government? takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Who Is Government? is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.