Who works for the government and why does their work matter? An urgent and absorbing civics lesson from an all-star team of writers and storytellers.

The government is a vast, complex system that Americans 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 favorite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them. 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.

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.

Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kailane Bradley. This book is a time travel romance, a speculative spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingeniously constructed exploration of the nature of truth and power. It is also a story about the potential for love to change it all.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams. Shortly afterward, she is told about the project she'll be working on: a recently established government ministry is gathering "expats" from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time. She is tasked with working as a "bridge": living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as "1847" or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by concepts such as "washing machine," "Spotify," and "the collapse of the British Empire." But he adjusts quickly; after all, he is an explorer by trade. Soon, what the bridge initially thought would be a seriously uncomfortable housemate dynamic, evolves into something much more. Over the course of an unprecedented year, the bridge will be forced to confront the past that shaped her choices, and the choices that will shape the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks the universal question: What happens if you put a disaffected millennial and a Victorian polar explorer in a house together?

Dead Wrong is a study of the scientific and forensic facts of four assassinations of the 1960s (President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Black Panther leader Fred Hampton), as well as an examination of new and incriminating evidence indicative of murder, not suicide, in the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, White House Counsel Vincent Foster, U.N. Weapons Inspector Dr. David C. Kelly and bioweapons expert Frank Olson.

It also examines the cases of two murders directly linked to Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States.

For years, the government has put out hits on people that they found “expendable,” or who they felt were “talking too much,” covering up their assassinations with drug overdoses and mysterious suicides. The extensive research shows how our government has taken matters into its own hands, plotting murder whenever it saw fit. “Big Brother” is watching you—through the scope of a sniper rifle.

Dead Wrong will give you the straight facts on some of the most controversial and famous deaths this country has ever seen. The harsh reality is that our government only tells us what we want to hear, as they look out for their own best interests and eliminate anyone who gets in their way.

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement is a powerful and persuasive discussion about economics, freedom, and the relationship between the two. Authored by Milton Friedman and Rose D. Friedman, this book explains how our freedom has been eroded and our prosperity undermined through the explosion of laws, regulations, agencies, and spending in Washington. The Friedmans argue that good intentions often produce deplorable results when the government acts as the middleman.

The book also provides remedies for these ills and offers insights on what can be done to expand our freedom and promote prosperity. This important analysis reveals what has gone wrong in America in the past and outlines necessary steps for our economic health to flourish.

Twice a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author Barbara Tuchman tackles the pervasive presence of folly in governments throughout the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government:

• The Trojan War
• The breakup of the Holy See provoked by Renaissance Popes
• The loss of the American colonies by Britain's George III
• The USA's persistent folly in Vietnam

The March of Folly brings the people, places, and events of history alive for today's reader, showcasing Tuchman's incomparable talent for animating history.