41 pages • 1 hour read
Michael LewisA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Why does Lewis choose a tweet from Donald Trump as the epigraph to The Fifth Risk? Why is it significant that it received over 100,000 likes?
Lewis uses interviews to prove his argument about the Trump administration’s lack of preparedness and its potential effects. Is this an effective strategy? What does it mean that he doesn’t include interviews from members of the Trump administration?
How does Lewis weave climate change throughout his narrative without making it an explicit part of his argument?
Compare some of the risks and programs highlighted in The Fifth Risk to what has happened since the book was published. Discuss whether some of the fears present in Lewis’s narrative have been realized.
All three parts of this book appeared in print or as an audiobook before The Fifth Risk was published. Compare these sources with the book itself. How is his argument stronger with all three together?
Lewis makes a few jabs at Trump and his staff throughout this novel, stereotyping a typical Trump team member as “a self-important, mistrustful person newly arrived from some right-wing think tank” (57). Are these comments indicative of a bias with which he might have approached this project? Does that possibility help or harm his argument?
Lewis himself is only involved in his piece sparingly, appearing to make notes about the scenery near Hanford, Washington, or when he is in the car with Kim Klockow. What is the effect of this rhetorical strategy? How does it advance his narrative?
Rick Perry once said that the Department of Energy would be among the top three to get rid of, but Trump went ahead and appointed him as leader of that department. What is Lewis saying about Donald Trump’s intentions in picking his appointees in relation to the department that they would be running?
Lewis focuses much of his narrative on project management. Based on the Trump appointees and previous administration’s staffers mentioned and interviewed in The Fifth Risk, what are the qualities of a government official with effective project management skills?
In many of his books, Lewis has focused his arguments on data. What role does data play in The Fifth Risk?
By Michael Lewis