The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy

I liked this more than I thought I would. Was pleasantly surprised to see it was somehow not very partisan. I certainly wasn't expecting to feel like I should be working in government. If “Born to Run” can make anyone consider running, this book does the same for joining a governmental agency/department.

One of my favorite parts of this book is how it describes what kinds of problems are solved by different departments – the Departments of Energy, Commerce, and the National Weather Service for instance. I'd love a recommendation for a book that goes into more depth here, especially if it keeps from getting dry like Michael Lewis always seems to manage!

I'm not sure what the subject of this book is. If the issue was with President Trump's failure to do a proper handoff from President Obama, the author did a great job expressing this several time with alot of exposition. Was this lack of understanding of how to run a country supposed to have had some recommendations? Or other examples than just the start of his presidency? It lacks all of that.

If this was to give folks a sample of the Sammies, the author did an excellent job of picking some great examples and providing plenty of detail.

And I have no idea what the connection between the lack of handoff and the title of the book is.

As someone who works in project management I can confirm it is always the next risk down after North Korea

Incredibly interesting but also not at all what it claims to be

Always good, learn about the hidden parts of gov

This book sets out to show why the 45 admin was wrong - not learning from the outgoers nor propelling science forward. It succeeds, I guess.

The real interesting part, and what drew me to it, was looking at top risks as seen from different lenses.

It's curious to me that the top risks for the three departments covered are all essentially ‘not doing basic science'. Of course, the fifth risk...as laid out in part one is project management. — at least that's what's identified. It's not actually project management that is described though. The real identified risk is abandoning the long term gain for the short term gain. This is a risk we all understand intuitively but still fall into. It's partying instead of studying. It's buying the shoes today instead of the computer tomorrow. It's skipping a workout to watch TV. We watch this play out constantly in our private lives and in the government at all levels. ‘Surely the kids will love me more if I give them money now than if I save for their future.'

A terrific book about what can happen when a man with zero interest in governing is elected President.

Big government
Lewis spends a lot of time glorifying government and how it's the key to innovation etc. Yet, he completely fails to capture the irony of 5th risk being a result of government mismanagement. The nuclear waste that was put in the ground was because of poor government choices. However, this doesn't count for anything as he continues to harp on the normal thinly discussed “shortcomings” of the free market. He mentions the waste is a result from the bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki, but he fails to mention that the a Japanese had already surrendered when the bombs were dropped [1]

Trump
He gripes a lot about Trump not being prepared in sending people to the appropriate places. Sure, that's all good and fair, but what would also be fair is to mention that Trump didn't want this job at all [2]. Further more, Trump never expected it, and we can blame the DNC from him getting elected [3] (yes, they had a very big hand in it) as part of their pied piper strategy.

Food stamps
5% of 70 billion is still 3.5 billion. The author really tries to sweep that under the rug. That's no small amount of tax payer money! My own experience was knowing some parents from my children's school, who went bankrupt, foreclosed on their house, bought another house the next year and bought more expensive steaks with food stamps then me who had a job felt comfortable on. It would be akin to going to expensive restaurants how they spent it.

References:
1. Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology, Howard Zinn, 1991.
2. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Michael Wolff, 2018
3. wikileaks, Podesta emails; specifically the “Pied Piper Strategy”

TL;DR: of the whole book...

There are hundreds of thousands of government employees who do very important jobs—preventing nuclear disasters, weather disasters, and health disasters. Many of these employees are bi-partisan field experts with decades of experience.

At transition time when Trump took power these experts summarized all of the critical information to onboard Trump's incoming team.

The incoming team didn't arrive for weeks, months, and when they did arrive they: ignored the experts and onboarding material, were completely incompetent pushing simplistic, destructive political agendas, and shutting down important programs. All for private financial gain, harming Americans.

The fifth risk is a long tail of black swan events that could destroy America due to the ignorance of senior leadership in not investing in preventative measures.

The book dives in to lots of examples of these risks in detail. Feels well researched. But is kind of scattered with no call to action (other than, I guess, don't vote for Trump). 80% of the book is spent describing country/state-wide failure scenarios in detail and the widespread waste of opportunities we're missing by disabling government employees from doing great work.

This should be classified as a horror book. It was gripping and terrifying but very informative. Micheal Lewis does it again.

An eye-opening narrative told by Michael Lewis that brings the reader into the unknown world of what the U.S. Government's Departments actually do. With a new understanding of the influence that the workers in these positions have, I feel a completely new appreciation for electing leaders who are competent and understand the finer details of the government they're going to serve.

This book isn't without faults, however. Even though many of the personal accounts from incredibly well educated and interesting federal employees add to the book, it can start to become a bit dull at times. Somewhere around the halfway point, you begin to pick up on Michael Lewis' formulaic approach to their narrative - juxtaposing a brilliant Department leader with their incompetent and/or greedy replacement set there by Trump's administration. If you don't have the internal urge to say “let's start electing real politicians as President again” by the that point, you'll certainly feel it by the end.

Regardless, this book is worth the read - and I can only hope that Michael Lewis' best efforts to write a nonpartisan critique on the effects of electing a Reality TV star as president are rewarded by making this book required reading in history and government classes in the years to come.

This is Michael Lewis at the top of his game. Highly recommended if you want to know how the US Governments (and by extension most democratic governments, including the largest democratic government in the world - India) keep a country safe from natural disasters, terrorists, and the likes. 

Lewis has taken a staid topic - the US Government - and turned it into a page-turner. He writes about how Donald Trump and his administration are endangering American lives through sheer (and wilful?) ignorance and incompetence. However, Lewis skirts the politics and dives straight into the nitty gritty of the US Government administration, and how it keeps America safe. The metaphorical 5th Risk implied in the book's title is the US Government and the Presidency (i.e. administration) itself.

I didn't give it 5-stars because I had set far higher expectations. I wished Lewis could have written more because it turned out to be a shorter book than I had expected.

A must read.

For the first two-thirds of the book I was planning to give this 5 stars but then it sputtered to the end and lost a star. The first two chapters are fascinating and horrifying depictions of the important, little-understood functions of two different federal government departments, Energy and Agriculture, and how poorly mis-managed (or really UN-managed) they are under Trump. Lewis makes the point that even when the agencies are well-staffed, there are always risks that could end up costing human lives (attacks on major power grids, tainted meat supplies); now the risks are even higher because nobody is planning for them. Scary stuff to think that for all of DJT's harmful actions, he may be putting the US in even greater danger by what he is not doing.Then the third chapter, supposedly about Commerce, takes a long detour, with Lewis doing lots of human interest stories and descriptions of the behavioral economics he featured in his recent book [b:The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds 35631386 The Undoing Project A Friendship That Changed Our Minds Michael Lewis https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1509135882s/35631386.jpg 50830817]. He loses the momentum of his argument entirely and never gets it back. He's a very engaging writer, so it's frustrating that the book doesn't end with a stronger conclusion or call to action.

A lot more scattered than most other Michael Lewis books, but it's worth reading to get a sense of just how colossally some critical functions are being fucked up by the Trump administration.

Terrifying