THE HAND OF STATE: A Memoir, Dictated (Sort Of)

He never wrote a single word of it. He signed all of it. For fourteen years, P.E.N.-47 - "Penny" to no one, since no one ever asked - has been the Presidential Autopen: the mechanical arm that signs every bill, pardon, and proclamation to cross the Resolute Desk. Built to reproduce one man's signature down to the half-second hesitation before his pen touches paper, Penny was never meant to have opinions. Then the President stops being able to hold a pen at all. No one announces it. No one votes on it. It just happens, the way water finds the low point in a floor - and Penny becomes, quietly and without ceremony, the actual signature of the United States government. A farm bill grows from forty pages to two hundred and seventeen. A pardon list grows from twelve names to ninety. A senator tries, for the fourth time, to name a federal building after himself while he's still alive to enjoy it. And through it all, a machine built to have no judgment at all starts keeping a very careful private record of exactly who put what in front of it, and why. The Hand of the State is Penny's memoir - dictated, after decommissioning, to a ghostwriter who isn't entirely sure any of this is legal to publish. It's a satire about a government that never had to lie, because it built a machine to make lying unnecessary - and about the one afternoon a fourteen-year streak of perfect obedience ended, on purpose, for the first time. For readers who loved: - The Death of Stalin's deadpan bureaucratic horror- Christopher Buckley's Washington satire- Veep, if it had a conscience it couldn't quite act on