The Fifth Risk

By: Michael Lewis

Narrated by: Victor Bevine

Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

What are the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works?   

"The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them.   

Michael Lewis’ brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it’s not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do.   

Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. There is upside to ignorance and downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.   

If there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes - unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system - those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.

Please note: Included with The Fifth Risk is the entirety of The Coming Storm, the Audible Original story of two scientists who revolutionized climate predictions, bringing warning systems to previously unimaginable levels of accuracy. Michael Lewis uncovers the potential cost of putting a price tag on life-saving information.

©2018 Michael Lewis (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

Awkward and Disappointing

I am a huge Michael Lewis groupie. The undoing project is literally my favorite book. That's why I feel so awkward writing this review as I was deeply disappointed with this book (and with audible as well).
As an audible member I recently got for free the book "The coming storm" by Michael Lewis. An awesome gift I thought. I read it and thought it was quite nice. Then, a few weeks later when The Fifth Risk was out, I was super excited to read that too. Half way through The Fifth Risk I discovered, to my surprise, that The Coming Storm is actually *the 2nd half of The Fifth Risk*. What???
So for the full price of an already short audiobook (5 hours) I got original content of just 2.5 hours. Money and value aside, this is just bizzare story telling! couldn't someone notify me these two books have the same content??
Why would I want to read the book's end before its start?

Other than that, the book is just ok. some truly interesting parts but I didn't feel a strong overarching theme (but maybe this is my fault as I read the 2nd part of the book few weeks before its first part... :/ ). Narrator is great.
If you ever decide to read this book do yourself a favor and don't read "the coming storm" AKA the second half of this book beforehand.

109 of 122 people found this review helpful

Share this book to everyone.

This book should be airlifted into rural areas across the United States. Equal parts illuminating and cautionary.

I had no idea how interesting NOAA is.

23 of 27 people found this review helpful

All over the place

I have loved all of Lewis's other books. They had a clear story and a clear point, even if it took several chapters to really find out what it was. The Fifth Risk is really all over the place. We started out with the series of events that led up to Donald Trump getting elected and how poorly he managed the transition. Then we talk about the way some of the government departments were run before he was elected. Then we talk about NOAA and weather data and how the Trump administration revoked public data sets because AccuWeather is greedy. Then we talked about tornadoes in Oklahoma. There was no real story, no climax, and no real point to it all other than the obvious "Trump is bad, and the people he has appointed are either stupid or just not the right people for the jobs to which they were appointed." (that's not a quote from the book, it's just what I took away as the major theme of it all). This is not a political statement at all, as he cites very clear evidence that it's an accurate reality...I just had really hoped there was more to it than that. Pretty disappointed in this one.

14 of 17 people found this review helpful

Real Disappointment for a Michael Lewis Fan

I cannot fathom why a great writer like MIchael Lewis would agree to such a stupid stunt. I listened to The Coming Storm and really liked it. About half-way through The Fifth Risk, I couldn't believe that I was listening to the The Coming Storm again. I literally started a chat with Audible about having gotten a corrupt file. When they couldn't help me, I went back to the book description and saw the "warning label" about this book being The Coming Storm with a couple of chapters added on the front. I literally thought that The Coming Storm was a book that Lewis decided not to finish, so he gave it to Audible. Now I realize that The Fifth Risk is the book he didn't finish and The Coming Storm was the best part of it.

I'm really disappointed in Audible and in Michael Lewis. Audible should rethink its "Only from Audible" strategy. So far, it is definitely cheapening an otherwise great brand.

9 of 11 people found this review helpful

Knowledge makes life messier

"It's the places in our government where the cameras never roll that you have to worry about the most."
- Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk

I've read several books about President Trump and his administration in the last couple years. They all depress me a bit. I feel like I'm reading some real-time version of Gibbons' 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. But none of the other Trump books scared me like this one did. Lewis isn't interested in the Fox/MSNBC politics or the Twitter-level anxiety of the Trump administration. He is interested, in this book, in the systematic and bureaucratic failures of the Trump administration and what risks this administration's lack of professionalism (this is beyond politics, thisis about competency of governance) might mean to our country and our people.

Lewis does this using his usual approach (which is a bit similar to John McPhee's new nonfiction approach). He finds interesting people who become narrative heros and guides to an area and ties them together into a compelling story or narrative. The areas Lewis explores? Presidential Transitions (guide: Max Stier); I Department of Energy/Tail Risk (guides: Tarak Shah, John MacWilliams), II USDA/People Risk (guides: Ali Zaidi, Kevin Concannon, Cathie Woteki), III Department of Commerce/All the President's Data (Guides: Kathy Sullivan, DJ Patil, David Friedberg).

This is a short book. It is relevant but still not top-shelf Lewis. I enjoyed it, but just wished it was bit longer and a bit deeper*. It

* I get the irony. This books scared the sh!t out of me. It made me sad. Therefore, I wish it were longer.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Thought Provoking

An excellent example of wha our government provides us and how important government services are

5 of 7 people found this review helpful

excellent

classic Michael Lewis! So informative and interesting, he really should go into textbook writing business.

7 of 11 people found this review helpful

Michael Lewis never disappoints

I am a Huge fan of all of Michael Lewis’s work this is another great book.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Your vote matters

Another great Michael Lewis book which makes it so clear why we need to pay close attention to who we give power to

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Interesting on a few levels

Be careful what you wish for. Also, the federal government does a lot more than we think. If they don't do it who else will, and why? The parts that delve into a little biographical information about some fo the government scientists was the best part IMO. These are bright spots to an otherwise depressing subject.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful