Nobody Was Home: How Citizens Lost Power and How to Take It Back
Buy a house. Ignore it for six years. Then walk around and complain that it needs paint.
That is how Americans treat their republic. We vote, go inside, and leave the halls of governance empty for years at a time. But an empty room does not stay empty. While citizens are absent between elections, organized capital—lobbyists, trade groups, and private funds—steps into the room, takes the chair, and never leaves.
In Nobody Was Home, retired 30-year PricewaterhouseCoopers audit partner Thom Barrett turns the rigorous discipline of Big Four internal control auditing on the federal government. He exposes how governance legally shifted from citizen representation to capital priority—not through illegal corruption, but because the owner stopped showing up.
Moving beyond outrage, Barrett delivers a practical, nonpartisan manual equipping citizens with seven concrete, between-election routes to inspect public records, hold officials accountable, and reclaim their seat at the table.
The paperback edition is available on Amazon.