Sunday Books & Culture
This week’s page reviews Sarah Chihaya’s “Bibliophobia,” a memoir of books that can ruin or heal, and Michael Lewis' "Who Is Government?", a rousing defense of public service.
Books & Culture is edited by Vanessa Sekinger
BIBLIOPHOBIA: A MEMOIR
By Sarah Chihaya
Published by Random House (February 4, 2025)
Hardcover $22.26
Audiobook $14.18
Reviewed by Drew Gallagher
Most people who read books enjoy reading books about other people who read books and what books they like to read. (Except in Spotsylvania County where certain individuals read books, or don’t, to tell other people what they are not allowed to read and how best to parent their children.) Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya is a book for those who like to read about what other people have read.
That brief distillation above is unfair because Chihaya’s book is a memoir with more depth beyond a list of books she has liked or have affected her. Chihaya recounts her attempt at suicide and her history of depression and the dark well it sprung from. But for the purposes of this review, I intend to focus mainly on a couple of the works she mentions, and there is a bit of rich irony in the fact that the book that most affected the author was on the list of books that the former Spotsylvania County School Board banned from its schools—The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
The inspiration for the title of Bibliophobia comes partly from the hold that The Bluest Eye held over its author because, for years, Chihaya could not reread the book, though she carried it everywhere. She was literally “phobic” of what The Bluest Eye might reignite within her. Morrison’s tale of Pecola changed the way Chihaya viewed the world.
“When I first read it, I couldn’t understand how or why, but I knew that this book was different from anything I had read before. Morrison’s descriptions curled in my mind and lashed out to my nerve endings. Of course, I had come across plenty of lovely words and enchanting phrases in many of the books I’d read up to that point, especially the ones I read over and over again. But this was different. Somehow the jarring beauty of language, metaphor after metaphor sinuously winding around the vital terror that the book inspired, imbued the book itself with a kind of electrical charge. Ever since, every time I pulled it from a moving box, or accidentally came across it on a shelf, I felt a static shock I could have sworn was physical.”
God forbid a high school student should ever have such a reading experience.
Chihaya beautifully captures her experience with The Bluest Eye, and, for many readers, it will evoke similar memories of books that changed their life. (For me, it was Albert Camus’ The Plague. When Tarrou catches the plague and dies, I remember weeping softly in my teenage bed and having difficulty falling asleep that night.) There were a number of other books that had an effect on Chihaya, and she writes of them in vivid detail. One that I was not familiar with was the long poem, “The Glass Essay”, by Canadian poet Anne Carson.
Stumbling upon this poem and then reading it in its entirety (online because it seemed absolutely necessary to read it in that instant) was a moment of serene pleasure. I ran to Riverby Books the next day because I needed this poem in my library, but they did not have it. But now each time I go into Riverby, I can scan the poetry section with the hope that someone will have deemed it time to share their copy of Anne Carson with the world. This is the very essence of reading and the adventure and joy that it can hold.
Drew Gallagher is a freelance writer residing in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is the second-most-prolific book reviewer and first video book reviewer in the 140-year history of the Free Lance-Star Newspaper. He aspires to be the second-most-prolific book reviewer in the history of FXBG Advance.
Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service
By Michael Lewis
Published by Riverhead Books, March 2025
Hardcover $30
Kindle $15.99
Reviewed By Martin Davis
John F. Kenndy’s inaugural statement “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” is 64 years, 12 presidents, and 6 generations in past.
The principle upon which it rests — public service — has been under ruthless assault for almost as long.
The Trump Administration is vying to deliver a lethal dagger straight into the heart of the idea.
Before one gets too excited, read Who Is Government? It’s a reminder that those who work in public service — as opposed to the politicians they serve under — are having impacts that far exceed the salaries that they receive. And they do it without klieg lights, narcissistic Hollywood awards shows, gawdy monuments to their work, or the NFL and corporate American thanking them for their service.
The book began as an opinion series in the Washington Post. Michael Lewis — whose best-known book is Moneyball — got the idea when shortly after Trump won his first presidential election, he stiff-armed the traditional transition process and fired the roughly 500 people on his transition team. “Chris,” the president-elect said to Chris Christie, “you and I are so smart, that we could leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves.”
Lewis realized that the incoming Administration had nary a clue what the federal government did. And, neither did he.
So he and other reporters set out to find people inside the government to understand just how the operation works. It wasn’t an easy task, as federal employees prefer to stay away from reporters’ microphones. They have important work to do.
Who Is Government? is the result of the reporting compiled by the Post that became one of the best-read series in that paper’s illustrious history.
If you’re one of those who hasn’t cancelled your Washington Post subscription (I had, but old habits die hard, and I still have friends who work there, so I resubscribed) you can read “The Canary,” the first chapter in the book. (You can also read the rest of the Post series.)
This is no love letter to federal bureaucracy. It certainly has its share of fat. Something Democrats (Bill Clinton’s Reinventing Government team cut hundreds of thousands of jobs) and Republicans (Ronald Reagan tried to reduce government’s size) typically agree on. But then, so do the tech companies in Silicon Valley, and most any major corporation you care to name.
Rather, this is a look at some of the extraordinary people and ideas and advancements that federal employees have been responsible for.
The book’s big lesson may well be this. Trim the fat, but be smart about it. America’s future rests on people committed to public service. They are intelligent, talented people who place country over self.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”
Man, way to go MD. If you'd have come out with this informative review a week ago, I could have saved myself a few dollars by reading these columns as part of my WaPO subscription rather than buying it on Kindle.
Okay, so maybe it's a little my fault too. In that I bought a new phone in January. Which came with 4 months of free Sirius. Which I never used. So when the 4 months ran out and they wanted me to start paying $12/month, I cancelled. At which point, they came back with a $5/month offer which I accepted.
So feeling the need to make use of this resource, I began listening to Jon Stewart podcasts. Which I'm now bingeing. And one of the first ones was with Michael Lewis, where he promoted this book. So based upon that review, I bought it. As well as his earlier book, the Fifth Risk.
I'm about halfway thru Who Is..... Now here's the sad part. So far, the book has been informative and the first essay, about the former coal miner, has been the best so far. But, TBH, the podcast was more entertaining than the book! I'll still read it, but it was the entertainment of the podcast that brought these stories to life, the writing has been a bit dry and chopped. Like they were so pressured to keep it short, they kept it from being good. Too bad.
Worth reading, could've been better.
Now for the review (yours, not mine - I'm certain that mine, like Caesar's wife, is above all criticism...)
Yeah, I'm still considering dropping my WaPo subscription at the end of the year. Possibly switching to USA Today. I'll still keep the NYT, and the online news features such as yourself seem to be slowly filling in the news coverage gaps. So it is hard to keep giving Bezos all of my money. The irony being, of course, that he owns Kindle, though I wish the Library of Congress would nationalize it.
Whattaya gonna do?
But really, your compulsive and inherent need to show they all do it drug you all the way back to the Clinton era? Really? Clinton? Bill, not Hillary? Really?
A generation ago? Last century? Last millennia? Move on dude, move on.
Must every column, on every subject have this fake equivalency?
Let it go. Just once. For variety's sake if no other.
The problem is not that Republicans are making an effort to cut waste that is so horrendous.
Even though, at this point, as you inadvertently highlighted; the effort "jumped the shark" long ago.
Now I fear, we're cutting meat and bone. and calling it fat for the cameras. If it's something you care about, you don't do surgery with a chainsaw.
LESS people answering the phones at Social Security is good for us?
Fewer firefighters?
Gutting FEMA?
Less enforcement of tax laws against rich folk at the IRS?
No Meals on Wheels?
Ripping up and suppressing climate studies? Etc.
More importantly, and completely ignored by you, is the method of these cuts.
Wholesale, chaotic, irresponsible, fraudulent, accusatory.
Blanket claims that those being fired are being fired for cause.
These are your neighbors and mine. Who's lives have been upended.
Your readers, and you cannot defend them?
Cuts to nuclear safety. As a town directly downwind from a nuclear power plant that sits on an active earthquake fault, you would think that would bother you. It sure does me. Enough to keep potassium iodide in stock for the kids and grandkids.
All happening in an atmosphere of distrust and terror where those being attacked are afraid to speak out publicly because of fear of further retribution from a malicious Republican party whose members use terror tactics which would make Night Riders of the Klan proud.
And the best you can come up with is "Trim the fat, but be smart about it." Wow, way to take a stand....
How about, prove it's fat, then be lawful, thoughtful, deliberate, respectful, and decent about it. Taking care of the people who have taken care of you.
As this book and so much other proof illustrate, in a democratic republic, our government is us. These are not our enemies. They are our best, brightest, most dedicated.
Doing the jobs for us that the private sector cannot or will not do, because it is not profitable, or they do not have the resources.
Your whole premise, like that of the current Republican Party, is built upon pillars of sand, ignorance, and prejudice.
Do better.
Think I'll go read about Arthur A. Allen now, but that's a whole other story. Though a good one, for a fat man who likes to be on the water. Moving on.