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Extracts

Extract: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis

The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

Going Infinite

*INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* 
*NO. 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* 
 
‘Extraordinary’ The Observer 
‘A stupefyingly pleasurable book to read’ New Yorker 
‘Lewis’s storytelling is as good as ever’ The Economist 
 
From the #1 bestselling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, the high-octane story of the enigmatic figure at the heart of one of the 21st century's most spectacular financial collapses 
 
'I asked him how much it would take for him to sell FTX and go do something other than make money. He thought the question over. "One hundred and fifty billion dollars," he finally said-though he added that he had use for "infinity dollars"...' 
 
Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't just rich. Before he turned thirty he'd become the world's youngest billionaire, making a record fortune in the crypto frenzy. CEOs, celebrities and world leaders vied for his time. At one point he considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there. 
 
Then it all fell apart. 
 
Who was this Gatsby of the crypto world, a rumpled guy in cargo shorts, whose eyes twitched across TV interviews as he played video games on the side, who even his million-dollar investors still found a mystery? What gave him such an extraordinary ability to make money - and how did his empire collapse so spectacularly? 
 
Michael Lewis was there when it happened, having got to know Bankman-Fried during his epic rise. In Going Infinite he tells us a story like no other, taking us through the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own. Both psychological portrait of a preternaturally gifted 'thinking machine', and wild financial roller-coaster ride, this is a twenty-first-century epic of high-frequency trading and even higher stakes, of crypto mania and insane amounts of money, of hubris and downfall. No one could tell it better.

Going Infinite is insanely readable and I devoured it, marvelling at Lewis&rsquo;s ability to pace, structure and humanise a story about something as dense and unfriendly as crypto&hellip; As with previous outings such as Moneyball (nerdy baseball stats), The Big Short (credit default swaps), and Flash Boys (high-frequency trading), Going Infinite shows off Lewis&rsquo;s peculiar genius for making arcane information as transporting as fantasy fiction.

Going Infinite is a stupefyingly pleasurable book to read. It’s perfectly paced, extremely funny, and fills in many gaps in a story that has been subjected to an unholy amount of reporting... What he began with Moneyball has come into full flower with Going Infinite. Lewis has surveyed a landscape taken by convention as settled and found it destabilized, at least here and there, by uneven and unreliable information. Perhaps Lewis’s book should encourage an update, however minuscule, in our own priors.

Going Infinite is a portrait of grandiose ambitions, youthful arrogance, and the distorting power of money... [Lewis] remains the greatest living exponent of the plain style in reporting. His eye for detail is unsurpassed... And as a chronicle of collective delusion - a modern version of the Dutch tulip mania - Going Infinite is an instant classic... Michael Lewis deserves huge credit for capturing [SBF] in all his infinite weirdness... Mark Zuckerberg, another boy genius in ratty shoes, once described Twitter as a clown car that fell into a gold mine. Sam Bankman-Fried was a Seth Rogen character who fell into a tulip field circa 1634. Another one will be along in a minute. We never learn.

Going Infinite is in many ways Lewis at his best. He marshals a complex global story without losing sight of the delightful and revealing human details. He is a world-class noticer … Lewis is a generous writer with a humane intelligence, and it is to his credit that he doesn’t reach for easy cynicism or cheap effects.

Lewis&rsquo; storytelling is as good as ever&hellip; In the past, Mr Lewis has focused on little-known people doing extraordinary things. This time his subject is notorious&hellip; Mr Bankman-Fried&rsquo;s hyper-rationality sets him apart from everyone. He views people not as good or bad, but as &ldquo;probability distributions&rdquo; around a mean&hellip; By tolerating the idea that hyper-rationalists cannot make sense of the rules of the game the way most people do, Mr Lewis implicitly asks readers to reconsider whatever they thought they knew about Mr Bankman-Fried. In the court of public opinion, he is already convicted. That&rsquo;s reason enough to give this book a read.

Going Infinite is wildly entertaining, surprising multiple times on pretty much every page, but it adds up to a sad story, even a tragedy, for its central character and for all the people who lost so much thanks to his actions… Lewis tries to answer the first question he was asked about Bankman-Fried: who was this guy? The question of his guilt or innocence Lewis leaves to the criminal justice system. I think that’s good practice, given that the trial is happening right now. For what it’s worth, I see no contradiction between the person described in Going Infinite and the things SBF is accused of having done. In fact I think the book makes it easier to understand how and why he did what he allegedly did.

Michael Lewis has an uncanny instinct for a big story, and is now right in the thick of the action again... Reading Lewis can feel like being a passenger in an expertly piloted bobsleigh. You&rsquo;re moving so fast down the mountain, but you know you&rsquo;re going to be delivered safe and sound &ndash; hot chocolate waiting at the bottom. There is no need to stress, only to thrill to the scenery as it hurtles past.

In November 2022, FTX collapsed in a matter of days after it suffered billions of dollars in customer withdrawals, sending shockwaves through the crypto world. To make sense of all this, with perfect timing, comes Michael Lewis… Going Infinite is his superbly detailed picture of the man behind it... So where might the money have gone? We still don’t entirely know, though Lewis offers some preliminary balance sheet calculations — which remain more detailed than anything FTX ever published.

Michael Lewis is the world&rsquo;s finest financial storyteller&hellip; Going Infinite is at its best in describing Bankman-Fried&rsquo;s rise&hellip; Lewis is equally sharp on how the effective altruism movement shifted its priorities, from donating to prevent disease and mortality in the global south to worrying about (putative) trillions of human lives across the galaxy in the distant future.

When the stories of our times are told, there will be no more seminal documents than the books of Michael Lewis.

I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it.

In the hands of Michael Lewis, anything is possible.

He is so good everyone else may as well pack up.

Life is what happens between Michael Lewis books.

Michael Lewis's global bestselling books lift the lid on the biggest stories of our times. They include Flash Boys, a game-changing exposé of high-speed scamming; The Big Short, which was made into a hit Oscar-winning film; Liar's Poker, the book that defined the excesses of the 1980s; and, most recently, The Fifth Risk, revealing what happens when democracy unravels. Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics.

'I asked him how much it would take for him to sell FTX and go do something other than make money. He thought the question over. &quot;One hundred and fifty billion dollars,&quot; he finally said-though he added that he had use for &quot;infinity dollars&quot;...' 
 
Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't just rich. Before he turned thirty he'd become the world's youngest billionaire, making a record fortune in the crypto frenzy. CEOs, celebrities and world leaders vied for his time. At one point he considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there. 
 
Then it all fell apart. 
 
Who was this Gatsby of the crypto world, a rumpled guy in cargo shorts, whose eyes twitched across TV interviews as he played video games on the side, who even his million-dollar investors still found a mystery? What gave him such an extraordinary ability to make money - and how did his empire collapse so spectacularly? 
 
Michael Lewis was there when it happened, having got to know Bankman-Fried during his epic rise. In Going Infinite he tells us a story like no other, taking us through the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own. Both psychological portrait of a preternaturally gifted 'thinking machine', and wild financial roller-coaster ride, this is a twenty-first-century epic of high-frequency trading and even higher stakes, of crypto mania and insane amounts of money, of hubris and downfall. No one could tell it better.

A Pandemic Story

The Premonition

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
 'Superb ... It is tremendous fun, tremendously told' The Times 
 
 'A fluid intellectual thriller' Daily Telegraph 
 
 From the global bestselling author of The Big Short, the gripping story of the maverick scientists who hunted down Covid-19 
 
 'It's a foreboding,' she said. 'A knowing that something is looming around the corner. Like how when the seasons change you can smell Fall in the air right before the leaves change and the wind turns cold.' 
 
 In January 2020, as people started dying from a new virus in Wuhan, China, few really understood the magnitude of what was happening. Except, that is, a small group of scientific misfits who in their different ways had been obsessed all their lives with how viruses spread and replicated - and with why the governments and the institutions that were supposed to look after us, kept making the same mistakes time and again. 
 
 This group saw what nobody else did. A pandemic was coming. We weren't prepared. 
 
 The Premonition is the extraordinary story of a group who anticipated, traced and hunted the coronavirus; who understood the need to think differently, to learn from history, to question everything; and to do all of this fast, in order to act, to save lives, communities, society itself. It's a story about the workings of the human mind; about the failures and triumphs of human judgement and imagination. It's the story of how we got to now. 
 
 'Lewis is a master of his form' Sunday Times

When the stories of our times are told, there will be no more seminal documents than the books of Michael Lewis.

He is so good everyone else may as well pack up.

Michael Lewis is one of the premier chroniclers of our age.

Superb ... It is tremendous fun, tremendously told. There is a lot to take from it - about the inertia of the US civil service, about the "malignant obedience" of middle managers, about how people fearful of the pandemic were treated with the "wary indulgence of the sane in the presence of the fanatic" ... Among those truths, in a familiar lesson for much of the world this year, is the danger of hubris.

A gripping story ... This is a book about some brave, curious people who tried hard to swim against the tide. As always in a Lewis book they are brought vividly alive ... Lewis is a master of his form.

A fluid intellectual thriller ... As always with Lewis, the book is full of fascinating facts and personal angles.

[Reading The Premonition] we see a disturbing common trait emerging in our country and others: the unwillingness to prioritise people's lives over ideas and ingrained structures.

It is hard to think of a writer who has had more success than Michael Lewis at turning forbiddingly complex situations into propulsive nonfiction narratives ... Without his ever having to spell it out, Lewis's message comes across very powerfully: the US government, in its institutional dysfunction, is in danger of abandoning its citizens to a private sector that is even less equipped to deal with large-scale disasters such as Covid.

'It's a foreboding,' she said. 'A knowing that something is looming around the corner. Like how when the seasons change you can smell Fall in the air right before the leaves change and the wind turns cold.' 
 
 In January 2020, as people started dying from a new virus in Wuhan, China, few really understood the magnitude of what was happening. Except, that is, a small group of scientific misfits who in their different ways had been obsessed all their lives with how viruses spread and replicated - and with why the governments and the institutions that were supposed to look after us, kept making the same mistakes time and again. 
 
 This group saw what nobody else did. A pandemic was coming. We weren't prepared. 
 
 The Premonition is the extraordinary story of a group who anticipated, traced and hunted the coronavirus; who understood the need to think differently, to learn from history, to question everything; and to do all of this fast, in order to act, to save lives, communities, society itself. It's a story about the workings of the human mind; about the failures and triumphs of human judgement and imagination. It's the story of how we got to now.

Undoing Democracy

The Fifth Risk

'Will set your hair on end' Telegraph, Top 50 Books of the Year 
'I forgot to breathe while reading The Fifth Risk' Michael Hofmann, TLS, Books of the Year 
 
The bestselling, no-holds-barred exposé of the people who are wrecking our democracy, by the master storyteller of our times 
 
'The election happened ... And then there was radio silence.' 
 
The morning after Trump was elected president, the people who ran the US Department of Energy - an agency that deals with some of the most powerful risks facing humanity - waited to welcome the incoming administration's transition team. Nobody appeared. Across the US government, the same thing happened: nothing. 
 
People don't notice when stuff goes right. That is the stuff government does. It manages everything that underpins our lives from funding free school meals, to policing rogue nuclear activity, to predicting extreme weather events. It steps in where private investment fears to tread, innovates and creates knowledge, assesses extreme long-term risk. 
 
And now, government is under attack. By its own leaders. 
 
In The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis reveals the combustible cocktail of wilful ignorance and venality that is fuelling the destruction of a country's fabric. All of this, Lewis shows, exposes America and the world to the biggest risk of all. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.

Stranger and more terrifying than fiction ... The characters are riveting, and the drama intense. It's a story so jaw-dropping that at times it's hard to believe it was not invented for film ... It paints a picture of America being not just pulled apart at the political seams, but in the very fabric of the government itself.

A page turner ... Lewis's most ambitious and important book.

Who will fight for the censuses of this world? Who will defend the research grants, food-voucher programmes and risk management projects that quietly sustain a healthy nation? Step forward Michael Lewis. ... The result is a civics lesson worth taking ... Stunning. His message is powerful ... reminds us why good institutions matter, why skilled public servants are critical and what our government is actually for.

Jaw-dropping ... genuinely stopped me in my tracks.

Michael Lewis has a gift for identifying seemingly inaccessible subjects and spinning them into epic stories with Hollywood appeal.

Lewis's remarkable books tend to tell the stories of underdogs, heroically independent-minded people who zag when the world zigs.

Risk has been the central theme of Lewis's highly successful career. ... The fifth risk is something impossible to conceive of in advance, or to prepare for directly. What matters is having a well-organised government in place to respond to these contingencies when they hit ­- exactly what the Trump administration has failed to do.

Given that we now seem to be inhabiting a somewhat medieval world of plague and portent, I'd like to make the case for the prophetic powers of the US journalist Michael Lewis ... In December the notion [of the fifth risk] seemed wildly far-fetched. Four months on, it seems we will get the chance to find out if he was on the money.

The best part of The Fifth Risk is the evidence Lewis can add to the pile ... Lewis is a master of boiling down complexity into individual stories told by interesting characters.

Michael Lewis has a knack for making the complex appear simple. Here he uses the inner workings of the US Department of Energy to demonstrate how Trump is dismantling government.

Michael Lewis's global bestselling books lift the lid on the biggest stories of our times. They include Flash Boys, a game-changing exposé of high-speed scamming; The Big Short, which was made into a hit Oscar-winning film; Moneyball, the story of a maverick outsider who beat the system; and Liar's Poker, the book that defined the excesses of the 1980s. Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics.

The morning after Trump was elected president, the people who ran the US Department of Energy - an agency that deals with some of the most powerful risks facing humanity - waited to welcome the incoming administration's transition team. Nobody appeared. Across the US government, the same thing happened: nothing. 
 
People don't notice when stuff goes right. That is the stuff government does. It manages everything that underpins our lives from funding free school meals, to policing rogue nuclear activity, to predicting extreme weather events. It steps in where private investment fears to tread, innovates and creates knowledge, assesses extreme long-term risk. 
 
And now, government is under attack. By its own leaders. 
 
In The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis reveals the combustible cocktail of wilful ignorance and venality that is fuelling the destruction of a country's fabric. All of this, Lewis shows, exposes America and the world to the biggest risk of all. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.

A Friendship that Changed the World

The Undoing Project

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BIG SHORT AND FLASH BOYS 
 
'A gripping account of how two psychologists reshaped the way we think ... What a story it is' Sunday Times 
 'You'll love it ... full of surprises and no small degree of tragedy' Tim Harford 
 
In 1969 two men met on a university campus. Their names were Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. They were different in every way. But they were both obsessed with the human mind - and both happened to be geniuses. Together, they would change the way we see the world. 
 
'An enchanted collaboration ... During the final pages, I was blinking back tears' The New York Times 
 
'My favourite writer full stop. Engages both heart and brain like no other' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Brilliant, a wonderful book, a masterclass' Spectator 
 
'Psychology's Lennon and McCartney ... Lewis is exactly the storyteller they deserve' Observer

Michael Lewis is a brilliant writer... The Undoing Project is a masterclass in narrative non-fiction

A new book by Michael Lewis promises an absorbing story, dazzling ideas, journalistic flair and originality. He achieves this with extraordinary consistency. In The Undoing Project he has achieved it again.

Kahneman and Tversky's deep friendship and intellectual collaboration has arguably done as much to define our world as, say, the intertwining between Francis Crick and James Watson... Michael Lewis, with his great gift for humanising complex and abstract ideas, is exactly the storyteller Tversky and Kahneman deserve.

I normally write two or three pages of notes when reviewing a book. On this occasion I scribbled six, often in high excitement. Lewis has a strong journalist's sense of a good story and the book is dotted with hundreds. He also has a feeling for pace and intensity. Although this is an easy read, nothing is wasted and everything seems to be in the right place. And what a story it is!

Michael Lewis is perhaps my favourite writer full stop. At his best, Lewis engages both heart and brain like no author, and he tells the story of Tversky and Kahneman beautifully... the final sections will have you weeping

Part biography of a friendship and part account of psychology's impact, while also taking in much of modern Israel's history, this is a fine showcase of Mr Lewis's range ... it is a story of remarkable individuals succeeding through innovative ideas ... Lewis has managed the unusual feat of interweaving psychology and the friendship between two men

Michael Lewis is perhaps my favourite writer full stop ... he engages both heart and brain like no other author, and he tells the story of Tversky and Kahneman beautifully

Gripping ... There is war, heroism, genius, love, loss, discovery, enduring loyalty and friendship. It is epic stuff ... Michael Lewis is one of the best non-fiction writers of our time. The writing has wit, passion and scientific credibility

Michael Lewis could spin gold out of any topic he chose ... his best work ... vivid, original and hard to forget

Michael Lewis's global bestselling books lift the lid on the biggest stories of our times. They include Flash Boys, a game-changing exposé of high-speed scamming; The Big Short, which was made into a hit Oscar-winning film; Moneyball, the story of a maverick outsider who beat the system; and Liar's Poker, the book that defined the excesses of the 1980s. Many of the ideas from these bestsellers underpin his latest book, The Undoing Project, which is the result of years of research. Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics. He is contributing writer for The New York Times magazine and writes for Vanity Fair and Portfolio magazine.

'There are geniuses who work on their own. Together, we are exceptional.' Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky met in war-torn 1960s Israel. Both were gifted young psychology professors: Kahneman a rootless son of holocaust survivors who saw the world as a problem to be solved; Tversky a voluble, instinctive blur of energy. In this breathtaking new book, Michael Lewis tells the story of how their unlikely friendship became one of the greatest partnerships in science - until, tragically, it started to unravel. Their ideas, shows Lewis, helped shape our world - revolutionising everything from Big Data to medicine, money to sport - and changed humankind's view of its own mind.

Flash Boys

'The greatest story of our age ... Be very afraid' John Arlidge, Sunday Times 
 
Michael Lewis's epic bestseller tells the outrageous story of the multi-millionaires and whizz kids who scammed the banking system in the blink of an eye - and the whistleblowers who tried to stop them. It's hilarious, terrifying and it's all true. 
 
'Thrilling, a masterclass' Robert McCrum, Observer, Books of the Year 
 
 'Jaw-dropping, astonishing ... Lewis has lit the touch paper' Liam Halligan, Spectator 
 
'The kind of writer who creates his own weather system' John Lanchester, London Review of Books 
 
'I read Michael Lewis for the same reasons I watch Tiger Woods. I'll never play like that. But it's good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like' Malcolm Gladwell

A beautiful narrative, so well-written. You've got to get this

Dazzling... guaranteed to make blood boil... riveting

This book has the potential to spark a cultural uprising . . . More than five years on from the Lehman collapse, Lewis has lit the touch paper on the mother of all debates about Wall Street and global finance

Compelling, a great yarn from beginning to end

When the stories of our times are told, there will be no more seminal documents than the books of Michael Lewis

Who knew high-frequency trading was such a sexy subject?

Michael Lewis is one of the premier chroniclers of our age

Michael Lewis is a genius, and his book will give high-frequency trading a much-needed turn under the microscope

Flash Boys is remarkable for its moral outrage as it reveals how high-frequency traders have hoodwinked both investors and the public . . . He is that rare beast: an insider who writes lucid, jargon-free prose and who never loses track of his ultimate responsibility to the story

Remarkable . . . Michael Lewis has a spellbinding talent for finding emotional dramas in complex, highly technical subjects

He tracks down the men who worked out what was going wrong and exposed it

Score one for the humans! Critics of high speed, computer-driven trading have a new champion

If you own stock, you need to read Flash Boys . . . and then call your broker

Important to public debate about Wall Street . . . in exposing what one of his central characters calls the 'Pandora's box of ridiculousness' that financial exchanges have become

I read Michael Lewis for the same reasons I watch Tiger Woods. I'll never play like that. But it's good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like

Probably the best current writer in America

If you thought Wall Street was about alpha males standing in trading pits hollering at each other, think again. That world is dead. 
 
Now, the world's money is traded by computer code, inside black boxes in heavily guarded buildings. Even the experts entrusted with your cash don't know what's happening to it. And the very few who do aren't about to tell - because they're making a killing. 
 
This is a market that's rigged, out of control and out of sight; a market in which the chief need is for speed; and in which traders would sell their grandmothers for a microsecond. Blink, and you'll miss it. 
 
In Flash Boys, Michael Lewis tells the explosive story of how one group of ingenious oddballs and misfits set out to expose what was going on. It's the story of what it's like to declare war on some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. It's about taking on an entire system. And it's about the madness that has taken hold of the financial markets today. 
 
You won't believe it until you've read it.

The Meltdown Tour

Boomerang

'A highly enjoyable exercise in financial disaster tourism... politically incorrect, often very funny, and shot through with genuine insight' Robert Harris, The Times 
 
In this hilarious, fascinating, timely must-read, Michael Lewis reveals the true natures of the countries caught up in - and exacerbating - our boomerang economies, showing how the financial meltdown hit us all in the face. Right now, Europe is in serious financial chaos. In Greece, infrastructure costs mean it would be cheaper to transport all Greek rail passengers by taxi, and hairdressing is classified as arduous for tax avoidance purposes. In Iceland, Range Rovers frequently explode as owners collect the insurance to pay for them. Ireland saw the entire country put up for sale - to itself, while the Germans expected the whole world to behave like them. But the whole world didn't. 
 
'Chock-full of extraordinary characters, amusing anecdotes and shocking insights' Observer 
 
'A tour de force... All those questions you've half-asked yourself: nowhere else will you find them answered with such incisive wit or terrifying clarity' Mail on Sunday

Fascinating ... the book could not be more timely ... a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today's headlines

Michael Lewis's bravura journey through Europe's economic underbelly brilliantly charts the consequences of a world plagued by debt ... highly enjoyable ... nicely politically incorrect, often very funny, and shot through with genuine insight

Lewis' investigation of bubbles across Europe is brilliantly, sadly hiliarious

Caustically funny ... urgent and chilling ... a thought-provoking read

Lewis is the finest storyteller of our generation

He is so good everyone else may as well pack up

Michael Lewis meets some extraordinary characters in his excursion through the barely controlled madness that is modern finance ... lucid, entertaining

He writes with the wit and observational eye of a travel writer

He writes quite brilliantly and understands the complex financial matters whereof he speaks. As polemical prose goes, it is hard to beat

Right now, Europe is in serious financial chaos. In Greece, infrastructure costs mean it would be cheaper to transport all Greek rail passengers by taxi, and hairdressing is classified as arduous for tax avoidance purposes. In Iceland, Range Rovers frequently explode as owners collect the insurance to pay for them. Ireland saw the entire country put up for sale - to itself, while the Germans expected the whole world to behave like them. But the whole world didn't. 
 
In this hilarious, fascinating, timely must-read, Michael Lewis reveals the true natures of the countries caught up in - and exacerbating - our boomerang economies. 
 
'Desperately funny' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Top form' Spectator 
 
'Fascinating' The New York Times 
 
'Hilarious' Irish Independent Review

Michael Lewis

This book rightly focuses on the quiet heroes who represent public service at its best... Musk’s demolition derby makes this kind of journalism feel, more than ever, like a civic duty... This eye-opening, multifaceted ode to public service therefore feels both urgent and moving

A vivid and important collection of essays that corrects the caricatures and shows the value of public servants... these are vivid stories, identifying unusual and low-profile work requiring great levels of commitment and expertise... these stories refute the suggestion that the only role of public services is to correct markets... public services create good, even great, outcomes for society

As a celebration of the quiet heroism of those whose painstaking work is being laidwaste by Elon Musk’s chainsaw, it’s powerful

Riveting, jaw-dropping, stranger and more terrifying than fiction

Life is what happens between Michael Lewis books. I forgot to breathe while reading The Fifth Risk' Michael Hofmann

The characters are riveting, and the drama intense ... paints a picture of America being not just pulled apart at the political seams, but in the very fabric of the government itself

Readable and compelling ... a horrific catalogue of all the things that can go wrong if a government takes its eye off the ball ... We should all be frightened

The Untold Story of Public Service

The government is a vast, complex system that citizens pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It's also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it's made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.Michael Lewis invited his favourite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them in a special in-depth series for the Washington Post. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.Whether they're digitizing archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these public servants are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. Expanding on the Washington Post series, the vivid profiles in Who Is Government? blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.

Michael Lewis

Praise for Who is Government?

This book rightly focuses on the quiet heroes who represent public service at its best... Musk’s demolition derby makes this kind of journalism feel, more than ever, like a civic duty... This eye-opening, multifa ...

A vivid and important collection of essays that corrects the caricatures and shows the value of public servants... these are vivid stories, identifying unusual and low-profile work requiring great levels of commi ...

As a celebration of the quiet heroism of those whose painstaking work is being laidwaste by Elon Musk’s chainsaw, it’s powerful

This book rightly focuses on the quiet heroes who represent public service at its best... Musk’s demolition derby makes this kind of journalism feel, more than ever, like a civic duty... This eye-opening, multifa ...

A vivid and important collection of essays that corrects the caricatures and shows the value of public servants... these are vivid stories, identifying unusual and low-profile work requiring great levels of commi ...

As a celebration of the quiet heroism of those whose painstaking work is being laidwaste by Elon Musk’s chainsaw, it’s powerful

This book rightly focuses on the quiet heroes who represent public service at its best... Musk’s demolition derby makes this kind of journalism feel, more than ever, like a civic duty... This eye-opening, multifa ...

A vivid and important collection of essays that corrects the caricatures and shows the value of public servants... these are vivid stories, identifying unusual and low-profile work requiring great levels of commi ...

As a celebration of the quiet heroism of those whose painstaking work is being laidwaste by Elon Musk’s chainsaw, it’s powerful

Books by Michael Lewis

Articles featuring Michael Lewis

Extract: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis

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