Who Is Government? Book Summary - Who Is Government? Book explained in key points

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Who Is Government? summary

Name: Who Is Government?
Rating: 4.5 (25 reviews)
Author: Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis

The Untold Story of Public Service

4.5 (25 ratings)

18 mins

Brief summary

Who Is Government? by Michael Lewis examines the critical roles of government employees in maintaining and improving societal functions, highlighting their dedication and the systemic challenges they face in a complex bureaucratic environment.

Topics

Social Philosophy Culture Political Figures Leadership US Politics Democracy

Table of Contents

Who Is Government?
Summary of 5 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 5

What’s in it for me? Understand your civil service.

In 2016, Donald Trump won his first US presidential election. Both Trump and his opponent, Hillary Clinton, had assembled teams who were poised to manage the transition of office across the 15 large federal departments and hundreds of smaller federal agencies that comprise the US civil service. But days after winning office, Trump fired the 500 or so staff on his transition team. He reportedly told governor Chris Christie that the two of them could handle the transition themselves.

But in the days and weeks that followed, after a series of perplexing decisions – for example, appointing Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy, despite the fact that Perry had said in his own presidential campaign that the Department of Energy should be abolished – it became abundantly clear that this administration had very little understanding of what the civil service is and does.

But there’s one clear path to understanding the civil service’s what and why, and that’s the who – the people carrying out the work involved.

This Blink brings together five fascinating profiles of contemporary civil servants, from cemetery directors to space researchers and, in the process, uncovers the hidden value of their work.

Chris Mark: Bureau of Mines

In his student days, Chris Mark was something of a political radical. In 1976, the beliefs that had led Mark on student marches and into union organizing, took him deep underground. He became a coal miner in West Virginia, with the idealistic aim of recruiting his fellow miners to the socialist cause.

Mark never led a miner’s revolution. But he did discover something unexpected in those dangerous tunnels: a genuine fascination with the underground environment, a fascination that persisted despite two brushes with death. This fascination eventually led him to Penn State’s mining engineering program. Here, professor Z.T. Bieniawski introduced him to coal pillar design formulas, which were meant to prevent deadly roof collapses.

Mark immediately spotted a problem. These formulas were contradictory and unreliable. Each suggested different pillar dimensions, yet mining companies used them interchangeably without understanding which one was most suitable. Engineers deployed their personal judgment to choose appropriate formulas. Which was fine … when their judgment was on point.

Utah, 1984: Twenty-seven people died in an underground fire in the Wilberg coal mine. The roof supports had failed during a record-breaking coal extraction attempt, trapping victims in an underground blaze. Mark knew that if the proper pillar calculations had been used, those miners would still be alive. His mission became clear: he wanted to eliminate deaths from roof falls in mines. In 1987, he joined the Bureau of Mines.

Mark spent years measuring how stress shifted onto remaining pillars as coal extraction progressed. He developed “stability factors” that predicted roof failure probabilities, then validated these predictions against historical collapse data. This analytical approach led to a breakthrough: the realization that geological stress from tectonic plate movement affected mine stability more than previously understood.

By 1994, he had created a comprehensive roof rating system, scaling mine safety from one to 100. This enabled engineers worldwide to evaluate their specific conditions and determine necessary support requirements. Mining companies eagerly adopted his methods, since roof failures cost $200 per minute in shutdown expenses.

2016: Forty years after Mark took a job as a coal miner in West Virginia, and 29 years after that terrible roof collapse in Utah, Mark achieved his goal. That year, for the first time in documented history, no deaths from roof falls in US mines were recorded.

Ron Walters: National Cemetery Administration

In December 1942, just days before Christmas, Staff Sergeant Robert Ferris Jr. soared toward Nazi-occupied France in his B-17 bomber. He and his fellow airmen were under orders to bomb a German factory near Romilly-sur-Seine. But the Luftwaffe had their own orders and when they intercepted the B-17, they carried them out. The aircraft plummeted, killing Ferris and his seven crewmates. Their bodies were recovered but couldn’t be identified, so Ferris was buried as an unknown soldier. Eighty-one years later, forensic scientists exhumed and finally identified his remains. In 2023, Ferris was repatriated to his home state of North Carolina, where he was buried with full military honors at New Bern National Cemetery. Like all national cemeteries, it’s reserved for burying military veterans and their families.

Among those attending Ferris’s homecoming was Ron Walters. Walters is neither a veteran nor a North Carolina native, but Ferris’s funeral would not have been possible without him.

Jarod Koopman: Internal Revenue Service

In 1930s America, there was no gangster more notorious than Al Capone. For years, FBI agent Eliot Ness and his crack team of operatives, known as “The Untouchables,” pursued Capone. But it was a quiet accountant with a ledger who brought down America’s most notorious gangster. IRS agent Michael Malone spent three painstaking years undercover, meticulously building the tax evasion case that finally sent Capone to Alcatraz. The lesson? Sometimes the most devastating weapon against crime isn’t a gun. It’s a calculator.

If there’s a modern-day equivalent to Michael Malone, it may well be IRS agent Jarod Koopman. Koopman’s cybercrime unit quietly provides breakthrough evidence in major investigations involving ransomware, human trafficking, terrorist funding, and child exploitation, all through tracing cryptocurrency transactions.

Pamela Wright: National Archives

When British forces marched toward Washington in 1812, Secretary of State James Monroe urged President Madison to “remove the records.” Thanks to the brave clerks who rescued the documents from the oncoming army, the original copies of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence still exist today.

Yet while there was a keen impulse to preserve the records, for generations after American independence they were preserved haphazardly at best, exposed to moisture and light and, devastatingly, fire. In 1921, a fire in Washington’s Department of Commerce destroyed most of the 1890 Census – a crucial chronicle of immigration and post-emancipation America. Spurred to action, Franklin Roosevelt established the National Archives in 1934. Initially, its remit was simple preservation. These days it has a broader mission: driving transparency and strengthening democracy through equitable access to government records.

Vanessa Bailey: NASA

Within the next quarter-century, humanity will almost certainly discover extraterrestrial life. This might sound like a bold prediction but we now have the technology to identify the chemical components of exoplanets – or planets outside our own solar system. This means that in the coming decades, we should know which exoplanets possess atmospheres, water reserves, and essential elements like carbon, methane, and oxygen. In other words, the fundamental ingredients for existence.

How will scientists pinpoint these signs of extraterrestrial life? Through the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Currently in development, it’s scheduled to launch into orbit in 2027. Boasting panoramic vision 100 times broader than Hubble’s scope, Roman will deploy advanced coronagraph technology for starlight suppression. In other words, it will block starlight to reveal hidden planets lurking behind blazing stars. Roman’s launch will allow scientists to identify worlds where life might flourish. After millennia of cosmic speculation, we’re approaching definitive answers about extraterrestrial existence.

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What is Who Is Government? about?

Who Is Government? (2025) asks an all-star team of US journalists to consider the questions: Who works for the government? And why is their work important? The answers uncover remarkable stories of the people, from cybersleuths to archivists, whose work keeps the United States running.

Who should read Who Is Government??

Lovers of quirky long-form journalism
Anyone who’s ever wondered what the civil service actually does
People seeking stories about why good government matters

About the Author

Michael Lewis is a best-selling nonfiction author. His titles include Flash Boys, Liar’s Poker, and The Big Short, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film.

Categories with Who Is Government?

Management & Leadership Politics Society & Culture

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