The Fifth Risk by Michael LewisMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I picked up The Fifth Risk thinking it would be about the Trump administration's hollowing-out of the administrative state by failing to fill key positions. There's some of that, but the book is much more about what the government does and some of the consequences should it stop.
Lewis splits the book into three main sections, each covering a major federal department: Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce. In each case, he goes out to talk to people about what those agencies actually do. Which is what you'd have expected the Trump administration's transition team to have done once the election was won, but was not the case.
I found the descriptions of the various departments fascinating. The mass of data collected by Commerce, the waste cleanup run by Energy, the nutrition programs in Agriculture: I'd sort of heard about those things but never in this kind of detail. And presented in an entertaining manner - Lewis knows his stuff and finds ways to make it all relatable and pulls in the personal touch with the various folks that provided the information.
The bottom line in The Fifth Risk is that these federal government programs (and presumably many others not covered here) are a key underpinning of our society, whether we realize it or not. And when the country's executive leadership is ignorant or uncaring, those programs are in danger of being taken over by oligarchs, cut down by budget cuts, or simply mismanaged into failure.
