The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy

　　富比世雜誌譽為「這世代最具指標性的新聞工作者」。
　　《橡皮擦計畫》、《魔球》、《大賣空》作者麥可‧路易士Michael Lewis，2018再創話題之作！
　　當政府被交到外行人手中，維繫民主運作的大轉輪，自此出現裂痕…

　　在川普勝選的隔日，在美國能源部─一個處理許多關乎人類存亡事務的單位─人們等待著部門交接小組的到來，但是─沒有任何人出現。在美國政府的各個單位，都遇上同樣的狀況：什麼都沒有發生。

　　維繫一個龐大國家的正常運行─無論是學校是否有充足的營養午餐預算，如何管理及預防危險的核能使用，又或是預測是否將發生極端的氣象災難─需要有專業素養、克盡職守的公務人員。因為有他們願意投身於那些私人企業往往不願涉足、研發、評估與承擔長遠風險的領域，讓國家、社會得以運行如常，以至於我們並不常留意到他們的必要性，直到事情亂了調…

　　麥可‧路易士帶讀者前往國家的引擎室，並找到這組織中的靈魂人物們，發揮他最擅長的角色敘事，透過這些小而關鍵的人物視角，為我們呈現出一個正遭逢前所未有危機的政府─而它的最大威脅，正來自它自己的領導、管理者們。本書除了是對美國政局內幕的第一手報導，也是對這些人物的致敬，反映如今日趨頻繁的素人政治現象，對政府運作帶來的潛藏危機。（文/博客來編譯）

　　The phenomenal new book from the international bestselling author of The Big Short

　　’The election happened ... And then there was radio silence.’

　　The morning after Trump was elected president, the people who ran the US Department of Energy - an agency that deals with some of the most powerful risks facing humanity - waited to welcome the incoming administration’s transition team. Nobody appeared. Across the US government, the same thing happened: nothing.

　　People don’t notice when stuff goes right. That is the stuff government does. It manages everything that underpins our lives from funding free school meals, to policing rogue nuclear activity, to predicting extreme weather events. It steps in where private investment fears to tread, innovates and creates knowledge, assesses extreme long-term risk.

　　And now, government is under attack. By its own leaders.

　　In The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis reveals the combustible cocktail of willful ignorance and venality that is fuelling the destruction of a country’s fabric. All of this, Lewis shows, exposes America and the world to the biggest risk of all. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.

Praise for Michael Lewis

　　"Saturation reporting, conceptual thinking of a high order, a rich sense of humor, and talent to burn."――Tom Wolfe

　　"Michael Lewis has a spellbinding talent for finding emotional dramas in complex, highly technical subjects."――John Gapper, Financial Times

　　"[Lewis] has a genius for unearthing tales of the counterintuitive."――Pamela Paul, New York Times Book Review

　　"The leading journalist of his generation."――Kyle Smith, Forbes

　　"Lewis is the kind of writer who creates his own weather system."――John Lanchester, London Review of Books

　　"I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it."――John Williams, New York Times Book Review

　　"[A] master of the character-driven narrative."――Charlie Gofen, National Book Review

Author

Michael Lewis

　　Michael Lewis’s global bestselling books lift the lid on the biggest stories of our times. They include Flash Boys, a game-changing exposé of high-speed scamming; The Big Short, which was made into a hit Oscar-winning film; Moneyball, the story of a maverick outsider who beat the system; and Liar’s Poker, the book that defined the excesses of the 1980s. Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics.