Caught Between the Dog and the Fireplug, or How to Survive Public Service

There really aren't enough books about what it's like to work in public service. This one is a pleasure to read, and I've given it to colleagues when I really want them to succeed.

Had this book for an MPA class--it was the hidden gem for that semester! The advice is given in an easy-to-read narrative, presented as personal correspondence between an uncle and his neice/nephew who are aspiring to public service careers. The insights are powerful and the prose is well-written. A must-read for those with an interest in the public or non-profit sectors.

This is an excellent book for beginning students of public administration or practitioners new to public service. It makes an excellent companion to an introductory textbook in Public Administration or American Government. Ashworth wrote the book as a series of letters to a niece who has decided to enter public service as a career. Each letter covers a theme of public service from an experienced practitioner's viewpoint, and is jam packed with useful advice. I especially found Ashworth's reflections on the political nature of public service useful and insightful. I have very few problems with this book. One problem is that some of the chapters ramble, just like a real letter would. This makes each chapter very readable and a welcomed break from the dry approach most textbooks take to the subject. This is why it makes an excellent supplementary text to an introductory public administration textbook. However, this approach might make it difficult for students to remember the insights and practical advice of each letter. Another problem is that a few of Ashworth's reflections are superficial. For example, his chapter on ethics comes across to me as pontification, not unlike a good person who has rarely studied the foundations of ethics, but now ponders such questions after a successful and fulfilling career. I have found that older professors in universities often believe they are qualified to teach ethics merely because they have lived a long time and want to indulge in some personal reflections. They ask questions about ethics without taking a disciplined approach to discover how others have attempted to answer such questions or why they reached their conclusions. Then, such professors make some remarks about their own ethics, leaving the foundational questions unanswered. In other words, the assumption made is that we need to be good and assume the great ethical questions do not need to be answered. This unstructured approach may reflect many people's approach to ethics. However, ethics is a discipline that, while being more like an art and than a science, is more structured and logical than Ashworth seems to indicate (for a better approach to public ethics, I recommend Practical Ethics in Public Administration by Dean Geuras and Charles Garofalo, or for a more academic approach, Ethics in the Public Service, by the same authors). As a result of his approach, I didn't find this chapter in his book very useful. Still, it is one small chapter out of a larger selection of excellent reflections about government service. So, I strongly recommend this book for its practical advice and insights into the everyday workings of government. I use it as a required supplementary text in my introductory public administration courses.

In his book "Caught between the dog and the fireplug", Ashworth has managed to take the sometimes boring subject of public service and made it humorous and anecdotal. Definitely a worthwhile reading for any student of public administration and especially beneficial to me, since I am involved in the educational field of public sector. It gives us real life applications of public administration theories and models used to formulate public policies by the author and behind the scenes look at public policy in the making. Ashworth feels the pressures of being a public servant who is required to serve the needs of the people but is at the same time has to answer to the requests of elected officials who are "never equal" in status to a public servant. It gives credence to theories by many experts who believe that elaborate constraints on public managers deprive them of authority to carry out their jobs and frustrate them professionally. In spite of this the author continues to do his job the best he can inside of the constraints of his domain and manages to influence public policy to benefit the public that he serves from the "bottom-up".

Caught Between The Dog And The Fireplug, Or How To Survive Public Service by Kenneth Ashworth (adjunct professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin) is a unique employment guidebook and commentary filled with practical and sound advice for anyone considering, pursuing, or currently working in a career related to federal, state, or local government. Ashworth writes in the novel format of numerous, entertaining, and wryly informative letters from a sympathetic uncle to a niece or nephew beginning a government career. A "must" for all anyone aspiring to a career in public service at any level, Caught Between The Dog And The Fireplug is highly readable yet filled with sensible observations and recommendations.