Stranger and more terrifying than fiction

Harriet Alexander enjoys this exposé of Trump’s move into the White House, by the author of ‘The Big Short’

‘ITHE FIFTH RISK

224pp, Allen Lane, £20, ebook £9.99

t’s what you fail to imagine,” writes Michael Lewis,

“which kills you.”

And, my word, does Lewis hammer home his point. His new book, The Fifth Risk, is enough to give anyone nightmares. We knew that the Trump administration could be scary. But few knew just how frightened we really should be.

Lewis, whose previous books The Big Short and Moneyball were both turned into Oscarnominated films, tells the story of the Trump team’s transition to power with cinematic brilliance. The characters are riveting, and the drama intense. It’s a story so jaw-dropping that at times it’s hard to believe it was not invented for film. What he uncovered was astonishing. “I was shocked by the richness of the material,” he has said. “Buried in the middle of this is a civics lesson, for myself as much as anyone else.”

He opens with the story of Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey, attempting to put together a transition team, in case the impossible happened and Donald Trump won the election. On the first page he tells how Christie rang the then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to ask why Trump hadn’t sent anyone who actually knew about governing to receive the briefings offered by the outgoing Obama administration. “We don’t have anyone,” Lewandowski replied.

Many of the most biting anecdotes appear to have come straight from Christie himself – who found himself being dumped by Trump after the election. When Trump found out that Christie, as required by federal law, had begun preparing a transition team, he was balled out by the flamboyant New Yorker, who reportedly yelled: “You’re stealing my f------ money. What the f--- is this?”

Trump reportedly later dismissed Christie’s efforts by saying: “You and I are so smart we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves!”

In news that surprised no one, after his shock victory

Trump immediately broke from decades of protocol and allowed the president of Egypt to be put through on the phone to Trump Tower – the first world leader to speak to the president-inwaiting. “Trump was like: ‘I love the Bangles! You know that song, Walk Like an Egyptian?’ recalled one of the advisers on the scene.”

The tale that unfolds of Trump’s transition would be comical, if it wasn’t so catastrophic. The book’s title comes from a remark made by the chief risk officer at the department of energy

– a £22billion-a-year, 110,000 employee agency, in charge of, among other things, keeping America’s nuclear material safe. He is asked by Lewis what the biggest five risks facing the US are, and he gives a frightening answer. “The risk we should most fear is not the risk we can easily imagine. It’s the risk that we don’t.”

Officials from the department of energy and other government bodies told Lewis astonishing

A long-haul truck driver was sent to take over the department of agriculture

stories of how unprepared the Trump team was to take over; how carefully prepared binders of handover notes were flicked over in a few minutes, how the main