The Fifth Risk | Book Library

The Fifth Risk
by Michael Lewis P

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (October 2, 2018)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781324002642
• ISBN-13: 978-1324002642
• ASIN: 1324002646
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.9 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces

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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 enjoying 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 publications that were prepared for them.

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

Willful ignorance takes on a role in these emerging 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 lttle bit more difficult for a person who wishes to get smaller the world to a worldview.

When 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 asks them what keeps them up at night.

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