BOOK REVIEW: The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

Oct. 13--Spoiler Alert. This review opens with the close of Michael Lewis' latest volume, "The Fifth Risk."

The review opens with the close because it is the best example of the book's theme.

An old woman spent years praying for a tornado to destroy her barn.

When the tornado finally comes, she is surprised. The tornado not only destroyed the barn but destroyed her house, too.

Why did she pray for the destruction of her barn?

The barn is where her husband killed himself many years earlier.

As Lewis explains, people may have good reason to pray for a tornado, whether it comes as an actual storm, or in the form of a politician. A person may imagine seeing it do the damage desired by prayer but "it's what you fail to imagine that kills you."

So, it goes with Lewis' latest book.

"The Fifth Risk" is about what many Americans forget when screaming for restricted governments, when demanding tax cuts.

We tend to forget the things that government does that keep us from getting killed. We tend to forget the daily things we take for granted and often don't even realize are a function of the federal government.

Such as the National Weather Service and the data it gathers.

Or there are the things we "fail to imagine." The stuff we know nothing about.

The long-running programs dealing with atomic and nuclear waste. Programs that are already decades old, maintaining regions from the early days of the U.S. nuclear arms race, and will be needed for decades to come.

The fifth risk is up there with national risks such as North Korea and Iran. The fifth risk is project management.

In "War on Peace," Ronan Farrow detailed how the Trump administration gutted the State Department and then failed to fill the vacancies.

In "The Fifth Risk," Lewis details how the Trump administration has failed to fill leadership vacancies in various departments or filled them with people who know nothing about the agency or have a conflict of interest.

Poor project management could well be a catastrophe now, or in years to come because there will be no one to bridge the gap from the pre-Trump knowledge to post-Trump operations.

Lewis is a reporter who writes books. He is the author of "The Blind Side," "The Big Short," "Moneyball," "Flash Boys," etc.

"The Fifth Risk" is a thin volume of detailed research and impactful storytelling.

It's well worth the read. Frightening because as much as Lewis shares, as much as readers may discover they don't know, they will walk away realizing there are so many other things we "fail to imagine."

___

(c)2018 The Valdosta Daily Times (Valdosta, Ga.)

Visit The Valdosta Daily Times (Valdosta, Ga.) at www.valdostadailytimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.