THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 97 bureaucrats but real people with families and fascinating backstories. Moreover, they are honest, hard-working Americans who are fully committed to serving the public good. Lewis pens two of the pieces, including an elegant profile of Christopher Mark of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. A former coal miner in West Virginia, Mark has focused for decades on finding ways to prevent mines from caving in on themselves. The self-effacing Mark brings worldclass expertise to bear on the subject, and his efforts have saved countless lives. Dave Eggers, the author of A Hologram for the King, deftly writes about his visit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. Top-notch engineers and scientists based at JPL briefed him on their interstellar projects. Eggers points out that they were all “exquisitely aware that they were spending taxpayer money” and “determined to justify the faith put in them.” The essay on the National Cemetery Administration, written by Casey Cep of The New Yorker, is particularly inspiring. According to Ronald E. Walters, the longtime head of the agency, “There is no place where the price of freedom is more visible than in a national cemetery.” In burying “140,000 veterans and their family members every year,” the NCA meets the highest standards. In her riveting piece, Geraldine Brooks—the author of the Pulitzer Prize– winning novel March—profiles Jarod Koopman, a criminal investigator with the Internal Revenue Service. Brooks is realistic in recognizing that the average American perceives the IRS in extremely negative terms. Even Danny Werfel, the IRS commissioner at the time of writing, admitted that it is “iconically unpopular.” Yet Koopman, a cyber-sleuth extra- ordinaire, has helped bring numerous criminals to justice while recovering billions of dollars for the government. For instance, his team helped catch Ross Ulbricht, the operator of the illegal “Silk Road” darknet marketplace. As it has turned out, President Trump pardoned Ulbricht this past January, and DOGE has eviscerated Koopman’s office. Comedian and journalist W. Kamau Bell is the author of “The Rookie,” one of the book’s livelier pieces. He is helped by the fact that he is writing about his very own goddaughter, Olivia Rynberg-Going. An exuberant new hire from Oakland, California, Rynberg-Going works for the Department of Justice. She eagerly explained to her godfather the significance of antitrust law. Justifiably impressed, Bell comments in the conclusion of his well-crafted essay how important it is that young people take their many talents into the government. He shrewdly observes, “We don’t need that for their sake. We need it for the rest of us.” The bad news is that the current administration has specifically targeted BOOKS Shining a Light on Federal Workers Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service Michael Lewis, ed., Riverhead Books, 2025, $30.00/hardcover, e-book available, 272 pages. Reviewed by Joseph L. Novak With the advent of the second Trump administration, the federal workforce has come under assault. A mysterious entity that goes by DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) has summarily dismissed tens of thousands of employees while dismantling agencies established via specific acts of Congress. In the process, public servants have faced a veritable tsunami of disparagement. Rising to the defense of federal workers is Who Is Government?, an exceptionally well-timed new book. Its editor, Michael Lewis, the celebrated author of such works as Moneyball and The Big Short, has assembled a collection of penetrating essays contributed by a variety of superlative writers. Who Is Government? expands on a series of articles published by The Washington Post in 2024. In his introduction, Lewis makes clear that public employees must contend with the fact that they do not publicize their achievements all that well. At the same time, there is the stereotype of the “nineto-fiver living off the taxpayer who adds no value and has no energy and somehow still subverts the public will.” Epithets like “deep state” and “the swamp” are also thrown at them. By filling in the details on select workers and highlighting their signal accomplishments, the book successfully counters the myths and lies. Public servants are humanized; they are not faceless The book will by no means prove the sole antidote to DOGE’s senseless onslaught, but it is effective in spelling out what is at stake for the country.
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