What do you think?
Rate this book
Performative Outrage: How Manufactured Fury Undermines Local Government and Public Service
98 pages, Paperback
Published July 3, 2025
1 person is currently reading
33 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 18, 2025
I follow Brooks Williams on LinkedIn. He's a city manager in Texas, and I'm a mayor in Virginia, and his posts make me feel less singular in my experience. What he writes, I recognize. He's living it and I'm living it, and he's trying to help people who aren't in government service understand what the challenges are in choosing public service in this current national climate.
I bought the book a month ago, carrying it around thinking surely I would find time to read a 98-page book. The reality is that I barely have time to make it through my day without being late to something. So when I saw that it was on Audible, I bought it and listened to the 2 hr 49-minute self-narration while walking my dog over the last 3 days. I think hearing him tell me these things himself was even better than reading it.
Living in a democracy is a group project. We all have roles to play as residents, voters, taxpayers, consumers, business owners, neighbors, and volunteers. For this great experiment in self-government to succeed, we need to show up in good faith. That's no longer the norm in many communities.
I will leave you with a sample as a way of enticing you to pick this up and read it, or download it and listen. Learning to be a better community member and human is an investment worth making.
To fix what has broken, leaders must do something radical, reject the stage.
Stop responding to outrage like it is truth. Stop validating voices that offer no solutions. Stop giving microphones to performers and ignoring professionals. Stop pretending every meeting needs to be a show.
Leadership is not theater. It is not supposed to be exciting. It is supposed to be effective.
Governance is not entertainment. It is responsibility. It is humility. It is doing the hard things in the right way for the right reasons, even when no one is watching.
It is time for the curtain to fall on performative outrage.
And it's time for real leadership to take the stage.
I bought the book a month ago, carrying it around thinking surely I would find time to read a 98-page book. The reality is that I barely have time to make it through my day without being late to something. So when I saw that it was on Audible, I bought it and listened to the 2 hr 49-minute self-narration while walking my dog over the last 3 days. I think hearing him tell me these things himself was even better than reading it.
Living in a democracy is a group project. We all have roles to play as residents, voters, taxpayers, consumers, business owners, neighbors, and volunteers. For this great experiment in self-government to succeed, we need to show up in good faith. That's no longer the norm in many communities.
I will leave you with a sample as a way of enticing you to pick this up and read it, or download it and listen. Learning to be a better community member and human is an investment worth making.
To fix what has broken, leaders must do something radical, reject the stage.
Stop responding to outrage like it is truth. Stop validating voices that offer no solutions. Stop giving microphones to performers and ignoring professionals. Stop pretending every meeting needs to be a show.
Leadership is not theater. It is not supposed to be exciting. It is supposed to be effective.
Governance is not entertainment. It is responsibility. It is humility. It is doing the hard things in the right way for the right reasons, even when no one is watching.
It is time for the curtain to fall on performative outrage.
And it's time for real leadership to take the stage.
September 28, 2025
It was affirming to read this and see so much of my lived experience in this book. But without acknowledging the increased impact on women, non-binary and BIPOC leaders, this author exposed his lack of true understanding about this dynamic and demonstrated he didn’t do adequate research. Almost everything in here is true except it should have been an article in HBR.
I appreciate having a name for this increasingly large challenge in public service.
I appreciate having a name for this increasingly large challenge in public service.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews