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The story of the politics, power, and civil servants who saved the U.S. Census An intriguing story about the people who conduct the Census, the largest and most important data set in the United States, and the growing threats to their crucial work. The U.S. Census is, by many measures, the largest non-war government operation, and one of the oldest and largest data collection projects in the world. The 2020 Census required more than a decade of planning and technical work, as well as managing nearly a quarter of a million temporary workers simultaneously, to collect data on the American population. This data was then analyzed to count each individual population of 331,449,281 people in the United States only once and in the correct place. This process is also one of the most important in the country, as census data determine how political power and federal funding are distributed. Census data shapes policy, and by extension, policy shapes census data. In this important book, Dana Boyd explores what it took for the Census Bureau to conduct the 2020 Census, amid a global pandemic and natural disasters, and facing political forces that restricted the budget, imposed strict schedule constraints, and attacked statisticians' methods. With his rare exclusive access to the Census Bureau, Boyd observed and interviewed hundreds of government employees who participated in the 2020 Census. By documenting these employees' perspectives, “Data is Made, Not Discovered” offers a rare glimpse into what it takes to prepare democracy data. Each chapter reveals a different challenge, from last-minute controversies over the citizenship question, to the futile help offered by well-meaning stakeholders to avoid undercounts, and shows how staff dealt with each problem, controversy, and obstacle. Boyd shows how many of the challenges the Census Bureau faced in 2020 resulted from decades of practices by political activists, data users, and various stakeholders, which Boyd calls “Jenga politics,” where the administrative state is weakened for short-term political gain by withdrawing support and adding more conditionality.