Live Talks NY presents Michael Lewis

New York Times best-selling author Michael Lewis has published many books on subjects ranging from politics to Wall Street to sports. His books include: Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short, The Blind Side, The Undoing Project, The Fifth Risk, The Premonition, Going Infinite, and Flash Boys. He edited Who Is Government?, an anthology by an all-star team of writers exploring the consequential work of government workers.  Lewis is the creator and host of Apple’s #1-rated podcast Against the Rules, a searing look at what’s happened to fairness in American life through the lens of people who depend on public trust. He grew up in New Orleans and lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

Jacob Weisberg is the author of books including Ronald Reagan (2016), The Bush Tragedy (2008), and In an Uncertain World(2003), co-written with former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin. He is the former longtime editor of Slate and the co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries. He serves as Chair of The Committee to Protect Journalists and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.

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?