Hardcover, 221 pages
English language
Published Nov. 8, 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company.
Michael Lewis's brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it's not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do.
Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to understand those problems. There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a …
Michael Lewis's brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it's not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do.
Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to understand those problems. There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.
If there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes—unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system: those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.
Well, that's terrifying. This is almost like lovecraft in that the unknown unknowns are huge lurking civilization ending monsters. Oy vey!
Amazing insights into how much the government does at all levels to keep us safe but how an ignorant and incompetent administration can jeopardize all of that.
Yes, I've read probably more than my share of 'the Trump Administration is a train wreck' books recently. I wasn't sure of the the idea of reading yet another one, especially as two years in, the wreckage is piling up higher and higher for all to see.
But Michael Lewis, this was a different read on the issue. Ok, it still detailed why the public is being so badly served by the administration. As the transition team never bothered to meet with any of the various government departments to learn what it is that they do. Months later, the appointed heads of these departments still have no clue (or interest) in what work is being done in these departments.
What was nice was the love letter to government bureaucracy and personal stories about how people came to work in public service. Most people don't realize just how much the government …
Yes, I've read probably more than my share of 'the Trump Administration is a train wreck' books recently. I wasn't sure of the the idea of reading yet another one, especially as two years in, the wreckage is piling up higher and higher for all to see.
But Michael Lewis, this was a different read on the issue. Ok, it still detailed why the public is being so badly served by the administration. As the transition team never bothered to meet with any of the various government departments to learn what it is that they do. Months later, the appointed heads of these departments still have no clue (or interest) in what work is being done in these departments.
What was nice was the love letter to government bureaucracy and personal stories about how people came to work in public service. Most people don't realize just how much the government does and how much is the foundation for vast amounts of economic activity. The example of Accuweather is prominent in the book, a company built on the vast amounts of data that the National Weather Service provides for free, data that is now being hidden or locked away so that the public has to pay for it twice, once for the National Weather Service to generate it and then pay Accuweather.
So, the book was still depressing but we have to hope that the government is resilient and can survive a period of neglect and plundering. Sadly, most people fundamentally misunderstand the government and the vast amounts of public good it produces.
In this compelling book, Michael Lewis describes the chaos and lack of curiosity that pervaded the Trump transition. Drawing on first-hand accounts from leaders of the departments of Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce (all of which do much more than most people know), he identifies the risks such a lack of curiosity carry for the American people. He then launches into what seems at first like a long tangent into the unsung efforts of NOAA and the National Weather Service. But this tangent serves to drive his point home: those who would dismantle government services in favor of private enterprise are ignorant of just how much they would lose.
I'm a bit of a Michael Lewis fanboy, just to get by bias on the table in advance, but this was an alarming and angering read.
Not really a "Trump book," more of a longread paean to three misunderstood federal agencies (Energy, Agriculture, and Commerce) with crucial public functions that no one understands, and which were gutted by the Trumpkins (largely off-camera).
