Going Infinite

Who works for the government and why does their work matter? Michael Lewis, bestselling author of The Big Short and The Fifth Risk, along with an all-star team of writers and storytellers, takes us on a riveting journey into a hidden world'A timely reminder of the quiet dedication and skill of the people who work every day to make this country work' - Barack Obama, President Obama's 2025 Summer ReadsThe 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. 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. Who is Government? shows how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.

THE OUTRAGEOUS NO.1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, NOW AN OSCAR- AND BAFTA-WINNING FILM <BR><BR>From the jungles of the trading floor to the casinos of Las Vegas, The Big Short, Michael Lewis's No.1 bestseller, tells the story of the misfits, renegades and visionaries who saw that the biggest credit bubble of all time was about to burst, bet against the banking system - and made a killing. <BR><BR>'In the hands of Michael Lewis, anything is possible ... if you want to know how a nation lost its financial mind - and have a good laugh finding out - this is the book to read' Sunday Times <BR><BR>'Magnificent ... a perfect storm of brilliant writer meeting big subject' Guardian <BR><BR>'A triumph ... riveting ... The Big Short reads like a thriller' The Times<BR><BR>'A terrifying story, superbly well told' Daily Telegraph<BR><BR>'A rollicking good yarn' Financial Times <BR><BR> 'Probably the single best piece of financial journalism ever written' Reuters

Who works for the government and why does their work matter? Michael Lewis, bestselling author of The Big Short and The Fifth Risk, along with an all-star team of writers and storytellers, takes us on a riveting journey into a hidden world <BR><BR>'A timely reminder of the quiet dedication and skill of the people who work every day to make this country work' - Barack Obama, President Obama's 2025 Summer Reads<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>Michael Lewis invited his favourite 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.<BR><BR>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. Who is Government? shows how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.<BR>

"The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them.Michael Lewis's brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it's not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do.Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand those problems. There is upside to ignorance, and downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.If there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes, unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system-those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.

'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' - Tim Adams, Observer'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, GuardianA wild ride through the destruction of the American government - and the unsung heroes who tried to stop it - by the No. 1 bestselling author of The Big ShortIn early 2025, an army of young men invaded the offices of US government. Armed with laptops and sleeping bags, a raft of prejudices and a bulletproof sense of mission instilled in them by their new boss, Elon Musk, the tech bro acolytes of DOGE were on a mission to seek and destroy, by any means necessary. But once inside, they came up against a group of people whose courage, commitment and in some cases lifelong devotion to the nation they served would quickly earn them the wrath of Musk. He called them Blockers. Find the Blockers, Musk told his band of worshipful young men - and eliminate them.Blockers is the story of the unsung heroes at the heart of the most complex and powerful machine ever designed by humankind, who fought back when DOGE, and then even darker forces, wanted to smash it all up. One kept Americans' most sensitive tax data out of the wrong hands, another made sure that politicians and civil servants played by the rules. One figured out how to stop wildfires from destroying suburban neighbourhoods, another delivered the cure to cystic fibrosis. There was also a security guard.This is a thriller about unlikely rebels and power-drunk villains. It is also a cautionary tale that asks, what do we do when the idea of public service becomes worthless? When the things we didn't even realise we were taking for granted suddenly no longer exist. When we don't know what we've got until it's gone.

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world's youngest billionaire and crypto's Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own-until it all came undone.

The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.

*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 EconomistFrom 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.

'The greatest story of our age ... Be very afraid' John Arlidge, Sunday Times<BR><BR>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.<BR><BR>'Thrilling, a masterclass' Robert McCrum, Observer, Books of the Year<BR><BR> 'Jaw-dropping, astonishing ... Lewis has lit the touch paper' Liam Halligan, Spectator<BR><BR>'The kind of writer who creates his own weather system' John Lanchester, London Review of Books<BR><BR>'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