How long does it take to read The Fifth Risk?
Michael Lewis, Ramón González Férriz
The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis, Ramón González Férriz takes about 4 hours 42 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 42 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2018. 256 pages, about 70,400 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 49 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 42 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 56 minutes |
The page count is the median across 11 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
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.
Subjects: Politics and government, Civil service, Management, Administrative agencies, Public administration, Government executives
