The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy
Oct 2018 · Penguin UK
4.3star
17 reviewsreport
Ebook
224
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About this ebook
'Will set your hair on end' Telegraph, Top 50 Books of the Year
'I forgot to breathe while reading The Fifth Risk' Michael Hofmann, TLS, Books of the Year
The bestselling, no-holds-barred exposé of the people who are wrecking our democracy, by the master storyteller of our times
'The election happened ... And then there was radio silence.'
The morning after Trump was elected president, the people who ran the US Department of Energy - an agency that deals with some of the most powerful risks facing humanity - waited to welcome the incoming administration's transition team. Nobody appeared. Across the US government, the same thing happened: nothing.
People don't notice when stuff goes right. That is the stuff government does. It manages everything that underpins our lives from funding free school meals, to policing rogue nuclear activity, to predicting extreme weather events. It steps in where private investment fears to tread, innovates and creates knowledge, assesses extreme long-term risk.
And now, government is under attack. By its own leaders.
In The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis reveals the combustible cocktail of wilful ignorance and venality that is fuelling the destruction of a country's fabric. All of this, Lewis shows, exposes America and the world to the biggest risk of all. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.
'I forgot to breathe while reading The Fifth Risk' Michael Hofmann, TLS, Books of the Year
The bestselling, no-holds-barred exposé of the people who are wrecking our democracy, by the master storyteller of our times
'The election happened ... And then there was radio silence.'
The morning after Trump was elected president, the people who ran the US Department of Energy - an agency that deals with some of the most powerful risks facing humanity - waited to welcome the incoming administration's transition team. Nobody appeared. Across the US government, the same thing happened: nothing.
People don't notice when stuff goes right. That is the stuff government does. It manages everything that underpins our lives from funding free school meals, to policing rogue nuclear activity, to predicting extreme weather events. It steps in where private investment fears to tread, innovates and creates knowledge, assesses extreme long-term risk.
And now, government is under attack. By its own leaders.
In The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis reveals the combustible cocktail of wilful ignorance and venality that is fuelling the destruction of a country's fabric. All of this, Lewis shows, exposes America and the world to the biggest risk of all. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.
Ratings and reviews
4.3
17 reviews
Scott Ellis
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October 14, 2018
The discussion around the NOAA and how it functions and is constrained is in stark comparison to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology which has a great web site and is well respected by the Austrailan people...
5 people found this review helpful
Rajesh Jhamnani
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March 5, 2020
Interesting look at the US Govt functioning and non functioning.
2 people found this review helpful
Paul Rowlston
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February 21, 2019
One of the best non fiction writers in the world. Period.
2 people found this review helpful
About the author
Michael Lewis's global bestselling books lift the lid on the biggest stories of our times. They include Flash Boys, a game-changing exposé of high-speed scamming; The Big Short, which was made into a hit Oscar-winning film; Moneyball, the story of a maverick outsider who beat the system; and Liar's Poker, the book that defined the excesses of the 1980s. Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics.
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