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Michael Lewiss

The Fifth Risk

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EVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPER THAN the surface of its pages. The characters and their world come alive through the words on the pages, yet the characters and its world still live on. Questions herein are designed to bring us beneath the surface of the page and invite us into the world that lives on. These questions can be used to:

• Foster a deeper understanding of the book
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Introducing The Fifth Risk

T he Fifth Risk is a book written by Michael Lewis. It exposes how the Trump administration has mismanaged its transition from the Obama presidency in the departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Commerce. Lewis tells stories of how departments are being mismanaged by inept Trump appointees who are unprepared to take over their respective departments. In the Agriculture Department, budgets for anti-poverty programs like school lunches and food stamps are enormously cut. In the Commerce Department, people worry about not having enough staff who will do the 2020 Census. In the Energy Department, staff worries about the lack of inspectors who will locate uranium being sold in the black market which could get in the hands of terrorists. Lewis interviews former heads of departments as well as the public servants whose expertise and dedication keep the government running. He looks deeper into the work they do and what increasingly worries them as their departments are being mismanaged.

Trump has not appointed enough people who will manage the departments. Of the few that he has appointed, they are uninformed and arrogant. Lewis' interviews reveal that many people working in government are highly educated, including scientists and management experts. They are the ones dealing with crucial issues such as climate change and cancer. They also have stories that tell how they succeeded in life. Many of them are first-generation Americans whose countries of origin have governments that don't function well. Lewis cites the example of Ali Zaidi, one of the most interesting people he met while writing the book. Zaidi is a Muslim immigrant from a rural town in Pennsylvania. He was staunch Republican who believed that he will succeed through hard work. He volunteered to help in New Orleans post-Katrina efforts. He soon became part of the Obama administration and was put in charge of the department that oversaw budgets at the Agriculture Department. He realized later on that one of the services being helped by his department is the school-lunch program which fed him as a child. Unfortunately, Lewis reveals that people like Zaidi are being replaced by inept appointees who have no legitimate credentials nor expertise. They are people chosen by Trump because of their loyalty. Lewis features an interview with the former chief risk officer of the Department of Energy, John MacWilliams. MacWilliams informs Lewis of the top five risks the heads at the Energy Department have to know. Lewis says the Trump appointees who took over positions at the Energy Department do not have the security clearance required for them to be briefed about the top five risks. They and the other appointees in the other Departments are inept, motivated by greed, have anti-government beliefs and are largely scientifically ignorant. Lewis further says Trump, who has appointed them, is "the single worst business manager that's ever occupied the office. He's obsessed only with himself, he doesn't manage anything."

The book's title refers to the security risk arising from an unpredictable situation that the government will have to deal with and involves the security of the entire nation. It is the risk that the government has to be always prepared for and this involves making sure that the government is well-organized and ready to respond to any kind of emergency.

The three departments that Lewis looks into in his book are the ones that need to be well-managed in order to support Americans in case of emergency and dire need.

The book was originally written as a series for Vanity Fair where Lewis had been a contributing editor for ten years. He did his research by inquiring into the ways the departments adapted under the Trump administration. This included studying the documents that were prepared to brief the political appointees who will head the departments. The documents were not light reading. The Agriculture Department staff, for example, prepared a 2,300 page, 13-volume document that gave an overview of its programs.

NPR says the book meanders with its stories and profiles of government workers. But it is an important book for people who care about government and the services it delivers for Americans. Publishers Weekly says Trumps approach to government administration is exposed by the book and the danger it poses is not to be ignored. Lewis tells how Trumps team transition team refused to learn about federal government functions. It is

"illuminating...[and] It's relevance to readers won't end with the Trump era."

The Financial Times says Lewis has a spellbinding talent for finding emotional dramas in complex, highly technical subjects." The New York Times Book Review praises Lewis for his talent for unearthing tales of the counterintuitive." Quartz says the book is a spellbinding, alarming analysis of the most serious threats to Americans safety. It thinks the book should be seriously taken because it is happening now from inside the U.S. government. The National Book Review applauds Lewis for being a master of the character-driven narrative."