Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State | Michael Lewis
Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State | Michael Lewis
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An inside look at the early days of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, as told by the public servants it targeted and one of America’s best storytellers.
Blockers. It wasn’t a compliment. In the new Washington, it was the worst thing you could be―especially if you worked in the federal government and wanted to keep your job. A Blocker was a holdover, an impediment, someone who didn't get the message―and, most of all, someone who didn't belong.
Michael Lewis found six of them.
Blockers is the story of people who believed they had a calling, who were convinced they were doing something the country couldn’t do without, and then discovered they were no longer wanted. One kept Americans’ most sensitive tax data out of the wrong hands and another made sure that politicians and civil servants played by the rules. One figured out how to stop wildfires from destroying suburban neighborhoods, another helped uncover the mysteries of cystic fibrosis.
There was also a security guard.
It should come as no surprise that the writer who made subprime mortgages gripping (The Big Short) and who turned baseball statistics into poetry (Moneyball) could transform the first two years of the second Trump administration into a thriller about federal employees. But he does.
And he does something else. He puts before us a clear question: If these public servants can’t survive in government today, then what does that say about us?
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Editorial Reviews
"Engrossing and enraging…Blockers is a warning that our politicization of everything is a tremendous curse and a reminder that, especially in a country of the size and complexity and power of the United States, there is much that government does, or should do, that ought to be quietly nonpartisan."
― Tim Wu, New York Times
"Michael Lewis has a peerless, uncanny gift for finding the human frontlines of the most abstract and complex stories… He routinely populates these battlefields with unlikely heroes from real life… This new book is a straight war report. Lewis speaks to some of those people who have devoted their working lives to keeping ordinary Americans safe… In each case, Lewis builds an intimate picture of their precise skill set, their devotion to duty, their deep specialized knowledge of complex procedures at different levels of government; and he shows how in each case they came up against the thuggish Doge apparatchiks who told them that all those qualities were no longer required… This cultural revolution was just as wanton in intent if not in execution as Mao’s original… The few dogged souls Lewis identifies were among those who refused to be cowed. The Muskrats had a name for them, which becomes the title of Lewis’s book. They were 'blockers.'"
― Tim Adams, The Observer (UK)
"The 'blockers' are the dedicated officials who try to stop the wanton and often illegal destruction of their life’s work by Elon Musk’s Doge or other agents of chaos…there are few better suited to telling this story than Michael Lewis, one of the world’s bestselling nonfiction writers."
― Sam Freedman, The Guardian
"For all its sound and fury, Doge achieved no meaningful cuts. Taking its false economies into account, Doge might even have added to the US deficit. Yet as Michael Lewis sets out in his commendable new book, Blockers, the effects of Doge’s 18-week storm will be felt for years to come… Those who want to know about how this is being done and what is at stake should read Lewis’s exemplary volume."
― Financial Times
"A roller coaster…reads like a political thriller."
― Laura Miller, Slate
About the Author
Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.
Product details
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Publication
W. W. Norton & Company
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Author
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Language
English
Lexile:
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Pages
256
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ISBN-13
9781324131656