The Fifth Risk

by Michael Lewis

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357455
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/03/2019
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	119,208
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

Date of Birth:

October 15, 1960

Place of Birth:

New Orleans, LA

Education:

Princeton University, B.A. in Art History, 1982; London School of Economics, 1985

Editorial Reviews

"Lewis has written a countercultural, almost subversive, book: one that praises the intellectual curiosity, dedication, foresight and sense of mission he finds among America’s federal workers."

Carlos Lozada

"Fascinating—and at times harrowing…Lewis tells an important and timely story, one that all of us who pay for, care about, and want government to work should hear."

NPR - Brian Naylor

"[The Fifth Risk is] so prescient it’s goosepimpling."

New York Times - Jennifer Senior

"[A] spellbinding, alarming analysis of the most serious threats to Americans’ safety happening now from inside the U.S. government."

USA Today - Don Oldenburg

"[A] spellbinding, alarming analysis of the most serious threats to Americans’ safety happening now from inside the U.S. government."

Quartz

"[A] page turner.… [Lewis'] most ambitious and important book."

New York Times Book Review

"A hymn to the 'deep state,' which is revealed as nothing more than people who know what they're talking about."

Boing Boing - Cory Doctorow

"Fascinating—and at times harrowing…. Lewis tells an important and timely story, one that all of us who pay for, care about, and want government to work should hear."

NPR

For those who are are still shocked by the results of the 2016 election, the author, who loves to dig deeply into the crevices of current events, has more anxiety in store in this audiobook. Narrator Victor Bevine has a low, restrained voice that underlines Lewis’s sense of foreboding. The main point is that almost immediately after being sworn in as president, Donald Trump began appointing people to government posts who had no interest in running a government. The result is the dysfunction we are presently experiencing. Bevine narrates deliberately but varies his tone to keep the audiobook interesting, and he’s easy to follow through some of the more dense passages. He also pauses effectively to allow us to consider the meaning of the author’s words. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile