The Fifth Risk
Undoing Democracy
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4.2 • 59 Ratings
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
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 first 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
If you’ve been confounded by the information streaming out of Washington, DC, on the daily, prepare to be totally flabbergasted. Michael Lewis—author of such brilliant nonfiction as Moneyball and The Big Short—details the Trump administration’s half-hearted approach to staffing and operating crucial sections of the federal government, most notably the cabinet-level departments of State and Energy. The Fifth Risk reveals jaw-dropping instances of vitally important posts left unfilled while other high-level positions are handed over to unqualified individuals. Readers on both sides of the aisle may find much to enlighten and alarm them here.
Customer Reviews
Good book but lost its focus at end
I thought that generally this was a good book that revealed some very disturbing examples about how the Trump administration is managing it’s departments and agencies from a political, as opposed to an operational perspective. It is frightening to learn how this singular re-focus has the potential of reducing or eliminating many of the excellent US government programs and information (data) sources, for political (and politically driven philosophic)reasons alone. The fact that (as detailed in the book) most of the Trump appointees have absolutely no clue about the nature of the public service they have been appointed, or their goals; and the reality that they do not appear to really care about them; or have appropriate backgrounds to run the government venture, is both disconcerting and disheartening.
As a Canadian, I have perceived this to be the case from anecdotal evidence I have been made aware of, but this book confirms it to be true, with real examples. The Canadian, Merit Based Public Service is a superior model as senior portfolio’s are generally not staffed with “political hacks” every election cycle. A much more professional staffing model based on the British Parliamentary system.
I thought the book was pretty good but seemed to lose it’s thematic focus about 3/4 of the way through the book. But overall a very interesting read.
Somewhat disappointed...
First chapter & half of the second one are fascinating - especially caught my attention what describing what is the "fifth risk".
Rest of the book meanders into story-telling, only loosely related to the subject with no concluding remarks