The Secret Lives of Citizens: Pursuing the Promise of American Life

Now, at a time when the cynicism about our government's value is a topic of heated discussion, Thomas Geoghegan vividly redefines the terms of the debate. Combining memoir and trenchant observation, he uses his own life to explore what it means to be a "national" civil servant and a "local" citizen.
He begins with the sense that a child has of Washington, D.C.--the marble presence of a big central government created by the New Deal. It was in this city that Geoghegan and many others of his generation expected to live their lives as civil servants and lawyers: the national elite, serving the common good, pursuing the promise of American life.
The decline of the "national idea," the rise of the States, and the growing weakness of the central government pushed Geoghegan to the local level in Chicago. There, as a lawyer, he fought evils of a new kind: tuberculosis among the homeless, the spread of child labor, the use of jails to house the poor--evils that the progressives at the turn of the century had vanquished but were now back in a new and more virulent form.
National government and majority rule were once the two great achievements of our history. But now, as Geoghegan vividly shows, the weakness and gridlock of the central government has undermined our sense of local community and local citizenship, and, most perniciously, has restricted our ability to affect the political process at every level, leading to disengagement.
In revealing the true nature of the current problems and the connections among them, The Secret Lives of Citizens shows how we might reclaim our right to shape our government and secure for everyone the true promise of American life.

Thomas Geoghegan's essays and commentary have appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and Slate, among other publications. His previous book, Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat On Its Back, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and received a special citation from the PEN/Martha Award judges. Geoghegan lives in Chicago, where he is a practicing attorney.