The Fifth Risk The Fifth Risk

The Fifth Risk

    • 4.2 • 1K Ratings
    • $12.99
    • $12.99

Publisher Description

The New York Times Bestseller, with a new afterword


"[Michael Lewis’s] most ambitious and important book." —Joe Klein, New York Times

Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative of the Trump administration’s botched presidential transition takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed. The government manages a vast array of critical services that keep us safe and underpin our lives from ensuring the safety of our food and drugs and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black market uranium before the terrorists do. The Fifth Risk masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.

GENRE
Politics & Current Events
RELEASED
2018
October 2
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
256
Pages
PUBLISHER
W. W. Norton & Company
SELLER
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
SIZE
3.4
MB

Customer Reviews

Colin Izer ,

Enlightening & Breathtaking

The Fifth Risk, the new book by Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Big Short), is a tour de force.

His main message is that our federal government does a lot of good things that we don’t understand or properly appreciate; and that we have a lot of smart, decent, mission driven people working in it. That’s 90% of his message. The other 10% pans the incoming Trump administration for being unwilling and unable to grasp this or manage it.

Leaving his politics aside, his stories about people and functions within relatively obscure agencies like Agriculture, Energy and Oceanic/Atmospheric are enlightening and breathtaking.

ManicMonkeyMojo ,

Yes, yes, Trump is evil…we get it.

Yawn. Another boring Trump is so dumb, and the people who support him—ugh, so gross! Whereas, the eternally employed, never fired, bureaucrats who staff the behemoth that represents the modern state? Wow, they’re so great. And handsome/beautiful. And smart.

Not once, not on any page of this book does the author take a step back and ask pertinent questions about the alleged horrors he imagines are assaulting the great, hulking edifice of the U.S. government. Why, for example, are there not enough appointees? (Answer: because the great bureaucratic behemoth purposely withholds necessary clearances, and those who make it past the post find themselves under constant harassment and bogus HR and Inspector General investigations.)

Why do appointees discard briefing materials? (Answer: they’re written by the permanent bureaucracy, to benefit the bureaucracy and its nefarious outside lobbyist cabal.)

Why are important programs being gutted? (Answer: because they aren’t important, are duplicated throughout the various departments of the U.S. Government, and waste untold billions of dollars on bureaucratic overhead.)

Why aren’t the experts listened to by the barbarians at the gate? (Answer: because those experts got us into two 20 year wars that never seem to end, and bailed out the wretched Wall Street banksters who have hallowed out the country, but who never have to pay the price for their gambling.)

All-in-all a boring, pedantic waste of time to make the author feel good about himself and his virtue. Yawn.

kismet gardener ,

The Fifth Risk

Surprising and revealing. Our government is actually a wonder - and I never knew. Seems the current Administration is happy to sit in the dark.

More Books by Michael Lewis

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
2011
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
2014
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World
2011
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
2004
Liar's Poker Liar's Poker
2010
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
2016

Customers Also Bought

A Very Stable Genius A Very Stable Genius
2020
I Alone Can Fix It I Alone Can Fix It
2021
Peril Peril
2021
Confidence Man Confidence Man
2022
It Was All a Lie It Was All a Lie
2020
Landslide Landslide
2021