Review: The Fifth Risk

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"What are the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works?" - This is the lead-in to the book's description on Amazon, and no doubt elsewhere. It's a scary notion, and with Michael Lewis doing the reporting, it is indeed frightening and depressing. HOWEVER, that's not why I loved this book. Lewis pulls apart the federal Departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce, and reports on many of the details of what these departments do, and it is a vast range of activities. Lewis provide lots of coverage of big data and analytical science beginning to pervade the key functions of the government during the Obama administration.

You might be asking - what is the fifth risk? Well, you really have to read the book!

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