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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJust finished "The Fifth Risk" by Michael Lewis. Great book. Well written and very, very interesting
Last edited Mon Sep 23, 2019, 09:12 AM - Edit history (1)
Highly readable, as are all his books. Covers some of the buried functions that our government performs and how important they are. Based on real profiles of and interviews with people who work in these functions. I couldnt put it down until I finished it.
Its really, really interesting and I learned a lot. Didnt want it to end.
What would you name as the top 5 risks?
Lewis asks this question to former government employees from the departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce about their agencies.
The former chief risk officer at Energy answers: 1) a broken arrow (a lost or damaged nuclear missile/bomb), 2 and 3) North Korea and Iranian nuclear aggression, 4) the vulnerability of the electrical grid.
It is the 5th risk that Lewis focuses on, and it where the books title comes from. That risk is bad project management.
Most of what the government does, as Lewis points out, only makes the news when things go very badly. The real work of government involves dealing with enormously complex challenges that cant be managed by the market.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,900 posts)mahina
(17,715 posts)Headlines.
Admission: audiobook
Jim__
(14,089 posts)Crabby Appleton
(5,231 posts)Thanks for the info!
lunatica
(53,410 posts)I looked it up on Amazon to read the reviews. Ill consider purchasing it. The first few pages were interesting and held my attention. The author just dives right in to an incident in the first paragraph which is unusual and, to me, very good. It got my attention right away. I dont like slogging through books, be that the sign of a good reader or not.